Virat Kohli surpasses Rahul Dravid to become fourth fastest Indian to reach 5,000 Test runs

Virat Kohli surpasses Rahul Dravid to become fourth fastest Indian to reach 5,000 Test runs

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By SportsCafe Desk, SportsCafe Editor

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Virat Kohli has kept cricket statisticians busy the entire year with his phenomenal ability to break some record or other in almost every game he has held the bat. And Saturday was no different as he leapfrogged Rahul Dravid to become the fourth fastest Indian to reach 5,000 Test runs.

Sri Lanka fell victim to Virat Kohli's wrath yet again on Saturday as the skipper brought up his third consecutive century of the series on the very first day of the Delhi Test. After India were reduced to 78/2 in the 21 over, Kohli came to the crease with his Test tally at 4,975 runs.

Alongside a composed Murali Vijay, whose century off 163 balls had hints of Cheteshwar Pujara, a steady Kohli brought up his ton in no time (110 balls) and reached yet another landmark in the process, becoming the fourth fastest Indian to reach 5,000 Test runs for which he took 105 innings.

Ahead of him in the list remains Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag, and Sachin Tendulkar who have taken 95, 99 and 103 innings respectively to reach the milestone, while Rahul Dravid had taken three more innings (108) to sit in the fifth spot. Among the current era greats, Kohli shares his position with England’s Joe Root to become the second-fastest scorer to reach it, while Australia’s Steven Smith tops the list, having achieved it in 97 innings.  

However, the record doesn’t end there as Kohli continued to enlist himself in the list of legends by becoming only the eleventh Indian batsman to reach 5000 runs after Tendulkar, Dravid, Gavaskar, VVS Laxman, Sehwag, Sourav Ganguly, Dilip Vengsarkar, Mohammad Azharuddin, Gundappa Viswanath, and Kapil Dev. He also crossed the barrier of 16,000 international runs across all formats.

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