Skipper Virat Kohli once again walked into record books after registering 12,000 ODI runs during his innings in the third match against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Putting up a rescue act for the visitors in a dead rubber of the three match ODI series, Kohli walked into an elite company of greats including Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Sanath Jayasuriya, Mahela Jayawardene, and Kumar Sangakkara. Kohli, before the start of the match, needed 23 runs more to achieve the feat. He reached the mark in the first ball of the 12th over when he took a single off pacer Sean Abbott.
Doing so, Kohli broke Sachin Tendulkar’s 17-year-old record of being the fastest player to register 12,000 ODI runs in career. Tendulkar had reached the mark in his 300th innings (341st ODI) when he had smashed a boundary against Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi at Centurion in 2003. Speaking about the match India handed a debut to left-arm fast bowler T Natarjan in the 3rd ODI. Kohli won the toss and elected to bat first and announced that India have made four changes - Natarjan, Kuldeep Yadav, Shubman Gill, Shardul Thakur were included in place of Mayank Agarwal, Mohammed Shami, Yuzendra Chahal and Navdeep Saini.
