5 batsmen who could break Virat Kohli's records
The rise and rise of Virat Kohli over the last few years has led to speculations about how many records he could break and the new ones that he could set. With 35 hundreds and nearly 10000 runs in ODIs from only 208 matches, it seems only a matter of time before he goes past Sachin Tendulkar’s record of 49 tons and 18426 runs in the same format.
But is there anyone who can challenge Kohli and break his records? Unlikely as it may seem, there are some contenders who could raise the bar and better even Kohli’s numbers. It won’t be easy but here is a list of five batsmen who could accomplish the feat of becoming the fastest to 8000, 9000, 10000 etc runs.
#1 Hashim Amla
Hashim Amla's numbers are even better than Kohli's
It’s hard to find a player who is a more polar opposite to Kohli than Hashim Amla. The always soft-spoken and gentlemanly Amla also possesses a different batting style from the outspoken and fiery Kohli. Yet, it is he who stands the best chance to break Kohli’s records for the simple reason that he has done that a lot already.
Once he got his footing in international cricket, Kohli started raising the bar in terms of time taken to reach landmark runs and centuries. He became the fastest batsman to score 5000, 6000 and 7000 ODI runs and was invariably the fastest to get to a particular number of centuries when he scored them.
But Amla with his unassuming style of batting got to those landmarks faster than Kohli, almost undetected. He is now the fastest batsman to score multiples of 1000 runs from 2000 to 7000 and looks good to keep going on in this spree. As of now, he has also been getting to milestones of ODI hundreds quicker than Kohli. With 26 hundreds from just 161 innings he looks good to set even higher standards in ODI cricket but the recent surge of form of Kohli means the incline of his success needs to be steeper for him to continue this trend.
But at the moment, he poses the biggest threat to Kohli’s records.