Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Virat Kohli became the first player in the history of the Indian Premier League (IPL) to score 6000 runs. In his 196th game in the lucrative league, playing for just one franchise Kohli has achieved the feat playing at an average of 38 striking at 130.
Kohli has had a scratchy start to his campaign in the ongoing season of the IPL personally scoring just 71 runs in three games on slow wickets in Chennai. However, the skipper came into his own on Thursday on a good wicket at the Wankhede Stadium against the Rajasthan Royals. It helped that his opening partner Devdutt Padikkal was up and running straight away, which meant Kohli took the backseat and kept milking singles and rotated the strike, rather gave him strike.
Padikkal was smashing it everywhere and raced off to 80 off just 36 balls and Kohli was just at 26 off just 24 balls and RCB were at 107 after 10 overs, cruising in their chase of the 178-run target. But from the next over, Kohli took the centre stage and slowly found his groove. A four off Chris Morris and he was away as he didn't stop after that.
As he took just 11 balls to reach his fifty from being at 26. Kohli was dictating terms now, a flick off the pads, a four towards the backward point and a six over the covers, he reached his 40th fifty-plus score in the IPL. And, after reaching his fifty, he smashed a boundary to cross the 6000-run mark, becoming the first player to do so and he is heads and shoulders above anyone else, as the second player in the most run-getters list is Chennai Super Kings' Suresh Raina with 5448 runs to his name.
Kohli remained unbeaten on 72 off just 43 balls. He now has 6021 runs to his name, which included five centuries, and he has hit 518 fours, 204 sixes.
