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Sachin Tendulkar needed 259 innings to get to 10,000, while Kohli has so far batted in 205 ODIs.
Besides Tendulkar and Kohli, Sourav Ganguly, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Rahul Dravid are the other Indian cricketers to cross 10000 runs in the format.
Virat Kohli became the fastest batsman to score 10,000 runs in One-Day Internationals, on Wednesday, fittingly enough, rewriting the iconic Sachin Tendulkar's record and compounding the cricket community's conundrum to find the right superlatives for his phenomenal batting.
'King' Kohli comfortably bettered the mark set by the man who was to Indian cricket for over two decades what the 29-year-old is for the past few years in the second ODI against the West Indies, in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday, which ended in a thrilling tie.
India amassed 321 for six before the West Indies, needing 14 runs in the final over, and five off the last ball, levelled the score when Shai Hope (123 not out) cut Umesh Yadav for a boundary.
Besides Hope's ton, there was also a scintillating 94-run blitzkrieg from Shimron Hetmyer that took the match the distance.
For the record, Tendulkar needed 259 innings to get to 10,000 runs, while Kohli has so far batted in 205.
Besides Tendulkar and Kohli, Sourav Ganguly, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Rahul Dravid are the other Indian cricketers to cross 10000 runs in the format.
Fortune, too, was on Kohli's side, as West Indies skipper Jason Holder dropped his Indian counterpart on 44.
Seventeen summers ago, Tendulkar had ventured into what was then unchartered territory, during a match against Australia. On Wednesday, Kohli became the 13th batsman to reach the milestone.
Not long ago, while the cricket world struggled to look for words to aptly describe Kohli's phenomenal batting, coach Ravi Shastri thought it would be wise to visit the bookstore, buy the latest edition of the Oxford dictionary and look for the adjectives that befit the captain and his superhuman feats.
‘If I were you, I would visit the bookstore and pick up the Oxford dictionary,’ Shastri had said, after a Kohli century guided India to victory over South Africa in February.
Some years ago, Tendulkar, after scoring his 100th international century, said he would love to see an Indian -- someone like Kohli or Rohit Sharma -- break his records.
At a venue set amidst picturesque hills in Visakhapatnam, Kohli reached the mark when he played Ashley Nurse for a single in the 37th over of the second ODI against the West Indies.
Having an enviable record at the Dr YSR ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium with scores of 118, 117, 99 and 65, Kohli began his latest innings with a boundary through the off-side.
Going into the game 81 short of 10,000, the run-machine added another feather to his illustrious cap with this latest achievement.
Kohli is in sublime form across formats this year and scored over 900 runs in ODIs alone. He is currently the world's No.1 batsman in both the Test and one-day formats.
Kohli's journey is awe-inspiring, from his first-class debut, winning the Under-19 World Cup, captaining the Indian team, to rewriting batting records at will.
With his unbeatable performances, he has won several accolades, including the Arjuna, ICC World Cricketer of the year and multiple BCCI international Cricketer of the Year awards.
"It's an incredible achievement by Virat to complete 10,000 runs in ODIs before he is even 30 years old. It's only expected that Virat will reach many more batting milestones in future," BCCI acting president C K Khanna said.
In the first match of the ongoing series against the Caribbean side, Kohli notched his 36th ODI hundred as he stroked his way to a breezy 140, helping the home team take a 1-0 lead in the five-match series.