Virat Kohli made his One-day International (ODI) debut in 2008 and ever since then, India have chased down a target of 300 or more successfully nine times.
The mind-boggling fact here is that, out of those nine times, Kohli scored a hundred seven times, including his century on Sunday during India’s first ODI against West Indies in Guwahati. It was the Indian skipper’s 36th ODI ton and overall, it was his 60th international century.
Kohli is just 40 centuries away from equaling Sachin Tendulkar’s world record of a total of 100 international centuries across formats. Meanwhile, he is just two centuries away from equalling South African great Kallis' 62 international hundreds and three away from equalling Sri Lankan legend Kumar Sangakkara (63 international tons).
Meanwhile, Kohli, who bagged his 17th Player of the Award as the Indian captain, equalled former Indian Captain MS Dhoni (17) in this aspect. Courtesy of Kohli and Rohit's centuries, India clinched a comfortable eight-wicket win over the Windies in the opening ODI.
Kohli, who scored a hundred off 88 balls on Sunday, reached the milestone of 36 ODI centuries in just 204 innings, while Indian legend Tendulkar had taken 311 innings to get there.
Kohli also became the first-ever captain to have aggregated 2,000-plus runs in two consecutive years. He scored 2,818 runs in 2017.
Although he was not the captain in 2016 (2,595 runs), it still is a great achievement to have recorded 2,000-plus international runs in three consecutive years.
Kohli overall became only the fourth batsman to have scored a total of 2,000 or more runs across formats after Sachin Tendulkar (1996, 97 and 98), Matthew Hayden (2002, 03, 04) and Joe Root (2015, 16, 17).
Talking of just Indian batsmen, Kohli and Tendulkar (5 times) have scored 2,000 or more runs in a calendar year for the most number of times ahead of former Indian captains Sourav Ganguly (4 times) and Rahul Dravid (3 times) and Delhi batsmen, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir (1 time).
