India captain Virat Kohli on Sunday shattered a 26-year-old record when he surpassed Pakistan’s Javed Miandad for most runs by any batsman in ODIs against the West Indies. Kohli was 19 runs shy of the landmark when he came into bat in the second ODI against the West Indies and he overtook Miandad’s tally of 1,930 runs with a single in the fifth over bowled by Jason Holder.
This was Kohli’s 34th ODI against the West Indies while Miandad had accumulated his runs from 64 matches. The prolific Indian captain has so far hit seven hundreds against the West Indies and has an average of over 71 in ODIs against the Caribbeans. Australia’s Mark Waugh is a distant third with 1,708 runs from 47 matches, followed by South Africa all-rounder Jacques Kallis (1,666 runs in 40 matches) and Pakistan’s Rameez Raja (1,624 runs in 53 matches).
Kohli played his first ODI against West Indies in the 2009 Champions Trophy in Johannesburg in which he scored an unbeaten 79. His first hundred against the West Indies came in 2011 in Visakhapatnam. Kohli’s domination against the West Indies can be gauged from the fact that he struck four back-to-back centuries against it between July 2017 and October 2018.
India beat Windies by 59 runs
Meanwhile, Kohli guided his team to a 59-run win over West Indies on Sunday, and a 1-0 lead with a game remaining in the series. Chris Gayle reached two milestones in his team's defeat, becoming the all-time leading scorer for West Indies in the format while also becoming the first West Indian to play 300 ODIs.
India posted 279-7 after winning the toss at Queen's Park Oval and choosing to bat. West Indies was all out for 210 in 42 overs chasing a revised target of 270 from 46 overs because of rain. Kohli scored 120 from 125 balls and passed Sourav Ganguly's career mark to move into No. 2 on India's all-time list of ODI scorers behind only Sachin Tendulkar. He was finally dismissed by Carlos Brathwaite (3-53).
His 42nd ODI century included 14 boundaries and one six and lifted his career tally to 11,406 runs in ODI cricket. Tendulkar retired with 18,426 ODI runs. Shreyas Iyer also contributed for India, scoring 71 from 68 balls before he was bowled by Jason Holder. Gayle opened for the West Indies and passed Brian Lara's West Indies' mark (10,348) before he was trapped lbw for 11 by Bhuvneshwar Kumar (4-31). Gayle, who made his ODI debut in 1999 and will turn 40 next month, now has 10,353 runs in 297 ODIs for the West Indies. He also scored 55 runs in three official ODIs for an ICC World XI in 2005.
