Virat Kohli goes past Graeme Smith’s world record for most runs by a visiting skipper

Before he landed in South Africa, Virat Kohli had earned himself the reputation of being one of the best batsmen in world cricket. His performances over the last six weeks have taken his reputation up a notch, as Kohli is now widely being considered as the batsman of this era.

There are some that even go as far as calling him the greatest ODI player of all time, as Kohli has outshone everyone in the ongoing tour. Kohli broke several records en route to his 35th ODI century.

Kohli scored three centuries in the series, becoming the first Indian player to score three centuries in a bilateral ODI series.

Virat Kohli became the first player in ODI history to score 500 runs in a bilateral series. Rohit Sharma’s 491 runs in the 2013 ODI series against Australia were the previous most runs for any player in a bilateral ODI series.

Kohli’s 13 centuries as a captain in ODI format is the joint 2nd most for any player while leading the team. AB de Villiers also scored 13 ODI tons as a captain while Ricky Ponting scored 22 ODI hundreds while leading his team.

Now we can add one more records, as Kohli broke Graeme Smith’s world record for the most runs scored by a visiting skipper. Smith scored 803 runs against England during South Africa’s tour of England back in 2003.

The previous highest score total by an Indian was Rahul Dravid was 645 runs in the West Indies tour of 2006. Kohli has now smashed these records and scored 884 runs in this tour already.

With three T20Is left to play, the Indian skipper has a realistic chance of scoring 1000 runs on this tour, a previously unfathomable thought!