Virat Kohli has passed Sachin Tendulkar to become the highest run-scorer in one-day international run chases, adding another landmark to a career that has already rewritten large parts of the record book.
The 38-year-old reached the milestone during India's win over New Zealand in the first one-day international of a five-match series in Auckland on Wednesday, producing a blistering innings of 74 runs off 51 balls that settled a rain-affected match and gave India an early lead in the series.
Kohli's innings was, by his own standards, a familiar kind of masterclass. Chasing a revised target of 143 runs in 32 overs under the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method after rain interruptions, India needed a fast start. Kohli provided it, striking 13 fours and a six at a strike rate of 145.10, and guiding the chase with the assurance of a batsman who has done this more often than anyone else in the history of the game.
India won by five wickets, with Kohli's innings the decisive contribution in a match shaped by the weather and by disciplined bowling from Arshdeep Singh and Anshul Kamboj.
The record Kohli broke had belonged to Tendulkar, the batsman against whom every Indian great is measured. Tendulkar scored 8,720 runs in 242 innings in ODI run chases, at an average of 42.33, with 17 centuries and 52 half-centuries. Kohli has now moved past that mark, with 8,741 runs in 169 innings at an average of 66.21, including 30 centuries and 46 half-centuries.
The comparison is striking: Kohli has scored more runs in 73 fewer innings, at an average more than 20 runs higher. It is the statistical signature of a batsman who has made the chase his own format.
That was not the only record of the day. Kohli also became the first batter in ODI history to maintain a batting average of 50 or more in all four SENA countries — South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia. He entered the match with an average of 49.66 in New Zealand.
His 74 pushed that average to 51.53, completing a set that no batsman had ever achieved. In conditions that have humbled generations of visiting batsmen, Kohli has now averaged more than a half-century in each of the four countries.
He also became the first player to reach 13,000 runs in ODIs while batting at number three. In 254 matches and 251 innings at that position, Kohli has scored 13,062 runs at an average of 61.61, with 48 centuries and 70 half-centuries, and a best score of 183. Number three is the most demanding position in one-day cricket: the batsman can arrive in the first over or the thirtieth, against the new ball or against spin, and must set the tempo for everything that follows.
Kohli has owned that position for more than a decade.
The numbers for 2026 alone tell their own story. In 10 ODIs this year, Kohli has scored 626 runs at an average of 69.55 and a strike rate of 120.61, including two centuries and four half-centuries, with a best score of 139 not out. Since his retirement from Test cricket, he has scored 1,002 runs across 16 ODIs at an average of 77.07, with four centuries and six fifties.
For a player written off more than once in his career, the figures are a reminder that reports of his decline have been greatly exaggerated.
What makes Kohli's chase record so remarkable is not just the volume of runs but the manner in which they have been scored. A run chase is the most pressurised situation in one-day cricket. The target is known, the required rate is always visible, and every dot ball tightens the pressure.
Kohli has built his reputation on absorbing that pressure and then releasing it, pacing an innings so that the asking rate never runs away from his team. His average of 66.21 in chases, compared with Tendulkar's 42.33, is not a marginal difference. It is the gap between a great chaser and the greatest chaser the format has seen.
The Auckland match itself was a reminder of how much of Kohli's late career has been about control. Rain had reduced the contest, and the revised target of 143 in 32 overs was the kind of total that can trap a chasing side into complacency or panic. Kohli did neither.
He attacked from the start, finding the boundary with a regularity that took the game away from New Zealand, and he was still there, in command, when the result was settled. The bowling of Arshdeep Singh and Anshul Kamboj had earlier kept New Zealand in check, and Kohli finished the job.
For Indian cricket, the timing of Kohli's form matters. The team is in transition, with a new generation establishing itself, and Kohli's role has shifted from the all-format anchor to the senior statesman of the one-day side. His performances this year suggest that the shift has suited him.
Freed from the demands of Test cricket, he has been able to focus his preparation on the fifty-over game, and the results — 1,002 runs at 77.07 since his Test retirement — speak for themselves.
There is also a broader significance to the records. Tendulkar's numbers have stood as the benchmark for a generation, and every record of his that falls is a moment in Indian cricket. Kohli has now passed him in the chase, the area of the game where Tendulkar himself was at his most formidable.
It is a passing of the torch that has been years in the making, and it has happened in the most appropriate way possible: with Kohli winning a match for India, in a chase, with an innings of controlled aggression.
The series against New Zealand has four matches still to play, and Kohli will have further opportunities to extend the records. But the Auckland innings will be remembered as the day he stood alone at the top of the chase chart, and completed a set of achievements — the most runs in chases, a fifty-plus average in every SENA country, 13,000 runs at number three — that no other batsman has managed.
At 38, in the twilight of a remarkable career, Virat Kohli is still setting the standard, and still, as the old line about him goes, the employee of the year.
(Reporting based on NDTV Sports, Rediff and The Economic Times.)