Virat Kohli becomes fastest to 9K runs in ODIs with fabulous ton

Kanpur: The Indian run machine Virat Kohli, who is playing is 202^nd ODI, became the fastest batsman to complete 9,000 runs surpassing South African legend AB de Villiers, in the third and final One Day International against New Zealand at the Green Park ground here on Sunday.

On completing 83 runs, en route to his 32^nd ODI hundred in his 194^th inning, he became only the 19^th cricketer in history to achieve the feat. Before the start of the match, the team India skipper had 8,917 runs to his credit in 193 innings. He got out after scoring 113 runs off 106 balls hitting nine fours and a six.

AB de Villiers had achieved the milestone only earlier this year in his 205^th inning (214 matches).

Kohli also scored his 32^nd ODI hundred in the match and now is 17 tons behind the all-time cricketing great Sachin Tendulkar who has 49 centuries to his credit.

He is also the leading run-aggregator in International cricket in the current calendar year and also the only player to have scored in excess of 1,000 runs in 2017.

Apart from becoming the fastest to 9k runs in ODI Cricket, he also completed 2,000 runs in back to back calendar years when he scored nine runs in the match.

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Significantly, Kohli has never averaged below 40 ever since his debut in international Cricket, and has scored 1,347 runs at staggering average of 74.83 this year before coming into the match. Last year, his performance was much better as he scored runs at an astonishing average of 92.37 in ODIs.

De Villiers had surpassed former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly's record of completing 9,000 runs in ODIs (in 228 innings), which stood unbroken for over 13 years.

Kohli, 28, also became the quickest to reach to 9,000 runs in terms of time taken since debut (9 years 72 days). He surpassed Indian cricketing genius Rahul Dravid, who got to the mark in 9 years and 322 days from his ODI debut. Now, Dravid and Kohli are the only two batsmen in international arena who have reached to the milestone within a decade in business.

Apart from Kohli and Ganguly, the top-10 list of fastest to the 9,000 run mark also consists the names of the Indian legends like Sachin Tendulkar (3^rd position, 235 innings), MS Dhoni (7^th position, 244 innings), Rahul Dravid (9^th position, 259 innings).

The other cricketing greats who have made a cut to the list are Brian Lara (4^th position, 239 innings), Ricky Ponting (5^th position, 242 innings), Jacques Kallis (6^th position, 242 innings), Mohammad Yousuf (8^th position, 245 innings), Adam Gilchrist (10^th position, 261 innings) and Chris Gayle (10^th position, 261 innings).