Colombo July 19 :Shikhar Dhawan on Sunday altered the record books of the game while batting against Sri Lanka in the 1st ODI of the three-match series in Colombo. As soon as he scored 23 runs, he became the 4th fastest batsman to score 6000 ODI runs.
The left-hand batsman achieved this feat by running two runs on the last delivery of 16th over bowled by Lakshan Sandakan. It took him 140 innings to score 6000 runs in One Day Internationals. The fastest batsman to garner these many runs was South Africa’s Hashim Amla who achieved this milestone in 123 innings. Second in the list is Virat Kohli (136), followed by New Zealand captain Kane Williamson (139).
Dhawan is only the second Indian in this list.
Dhawan also became the 10th Indian to achieve the feat. The others who have crossed 6000 runs in ODIs are Sachin Tendulkar (18,426 runs), current skipper Virat Kohli (12169 runs), former skipper and current BCCI President Sourav Ganguly (11221 runs).
The others in the list are Rahul Dravid (10768 runs), Mahendra Singh Dhoni (10599 runs), Mohammed Azharuddin (9378 runs), Rohit Sharma (9205 runs), Yuvraj Singh (8609 runs) and Virender Sehwag (7995 runs).
Dhawan, who is on his captaincy debut, also notched up 10,000 runs in international cricket. The left-hander achieved this remarkable feat during the opening tie of the 3-match series against Sri Lanka in Colombo.
Dhawan, who is also on his captaincy debut in the Sri Lanka tour, became the 14th Indian batsman to achieve the landmark. Before going out to bat in the first ODI against Sri Lanka, Dhawan had 5977 runs to his credit from 142 ODIs, including 17 centuries and 32 fifties. He has scored 1673 runs in 65 T20Is and 2315 runs in 34 Test matches.
With 35 runs required, the opening batsman reached the milestone in the 20th over with single off Lakshan Sandakan’s bowling. It was the 261st innings if his international cricket career.
The quickest to this milestone is Indian captain Virat Kohli who had breached the mark in 232 innings. Former Indian captain and batting legend Sunil Gavaskar stands second in the list having crossed the figure in 243 innings. The likes of Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, and Rahul Dravid round up the top 5 with 253, 256, and 257 innings respectively.
Earlier, Team India restricted the hosts to Sri Lanka to 262 for 9. Kuldeep (2/48) and Chahal (2/52 didn’t exactly run through the Sri Lankan batting line-up but bowled enough wicket-taking deliveries to choke the run-flow. Krunal Pandya (1/26) also chipped in to make run-scoring an arduous task for the Lankan middle order. The three spinners collectively bowled 98 dot balls which formed as many as 16.2 quiet overs.