India’s Virat Kohli has knocked AB de Villiers off his perch as the fastest batsman to 7 000 ODI runs.
In the third ODI between India and Australia, Kohli was playing his 161st ODI innings when he glanced a leg-side delivery from James Faulkner for four to bring up the landmark. De Villiers was in his 166th innings when he went through the 7 000 barrier in November 2014, against Australia.
Kohli then went on to score his 24th century, becoming the fastest player to that landmark too. This came almost a year after De Villiers played that outstanding innings which made him the fastest centurion ever. AB now has 23 hundreds.
Before AB and Kohli, Sourav Ganguly was the fastest with 174 innings. Others on the list are Brian Lara (183) and Desmond Haynes (187).J acques Kallis was the previous fastest South African –188 innings – with Herschelle Gibbs the only other South African to have scored more than 7 000 ODI runs..
All is not lost: Hashim Amla could reclaim the accolade for the Proteas if he steps up. He is on 6 008 runs from 123 innings.
