Rohit Sharma emulates Virat Kohli, becomes 4th Indian batter to 20,000 runs

Former captain Rohit Sharma achieved a major milestone on Saturday, going past 20,000 runs in international cricket. The 38-year-old achieved the feat when he got to 27 in his knock of 75 during India's chase of 271 against South Africa in the final ODI of a three-match series in Visakhapatnam.

Rohit Sharma became only the fourth Indian batter to achieve the landmark and the 14th batter to get to the milestone in international cricket. Rohit joined an elite list of Indian batters, including Virat Kohli, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid.

Rohit hit 75 off 73 balls, smashing seven boundaries and a six before getting out to Keshav Maharaj. The senior campaigner and Yashasvi Jaiswal added 155 runs for the opening partnership, laying a strong foundation for India's chase in the series decider.

MOST RUNS IN INTERNATIONAL CRICKET FOR INDIA

1. Sachin Tendulkar: 664 matches, 34,357 runs, 100 hundreds, 164 fifties

2. Virat Kohli: 556 matches, 27,910 runs, 84



hundreds, 144 fifties

3. Rahul Dravid: 504 matches, 24,064 runs, 48 hundreds, 145 fifties

4. Rohit Sharma: 505 matches, 20,000* runs, 50 hundreds, 110 fifties

5. Sourav Ganguly: 421 matches, 18,433 runs, 38 hundreds, 106 fifties

6. MS Dhoni: 535 matches, 17,092 runs, 15 hundreds, 108 fifties

Rohit has scored over 11,000 runs in ODIs and over 4000 in T20Is as majority of his 20,000 runs have come in white-ball cricket. Notably, the T20 World Cup-winning captain finished as India's leading run-getter in the shortest format of the game - 4231 runs in 159 matches.

Rohit Sharma made his ODI debut for India on 23 June 2007 against Ireland. In the early years of his limited-overs career he often batted in the middle order and went through a rough patch — by 2013, after 86 ODIs, his record was modest, which left many questioning whether he could fulfil the promise he showed.

However, the switch flicked when he was asked to open the batting in 2013 by MS Dhoni.