Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
In God’s Own Country, on a Sunday in Thiruvananthapuram, the prayer was never going to be whispered. Virat Kohli offered his with the bat—and the Kerala crowd stayed to see how the king’s prayer was answered.
India were chasing 296 runs against the West Indies in the first match of the ODI series. Kohli walked in needing 59 for his 15,000 ODI runs. He left unbeaten on 139 off 88 balls, and India were home by eight wickets with 50 balls to spare. The ledger showed only one name above Kohli’s: Sachin Tendulkar at 18,426 ODI runs.
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Kohli is 37. He no longer plays Tests. He has spent the last year being asked whether the body would still permit the old hunger. The answer, for one Kerala evening, was a personal best of nine sixes, 10 fours, a 50 off 40 balls and a hundred off 74—his third-fastest in the format. The shot that took Kohli past 15,000 runs was a pull off Alzarri Joseph. Kohli put both arms up, not as a man surprised by the arithmetic but as one who still treats the crowd as part of the contract.
The only comparison that matters
Tendulkar remains the mountain to scale. But Kohli has become the fastest climber by the measures cricket actually uses. He needed 303 innings to reach 15,000 runs, Tendulkar 377. He faced 15,950 balls, Tendulkar 17,528.
From debut, Tendulkar still got there 212 days sooner—India, in his prime, simply scheduled more ODI cricket. After this innings, Kohli’s ODI average sits near 60—59.13 to be precise. Tendulkar’s at the same landmark was 44.83.
Playing at home thickened the night. Kohli now has 7,006 ODI runs in India, past Tendulkar’s 6,976. The hundred was his 10th against the West Indies, matching his own 10 against Sri Lanka—the only man with a double-digit century tally against two attacks. It was also his 60th hundred in all List A cricket—level with Tendulkar, who needed 538 innings for the same pile. Kohli has used 338 innings. Fifty-five of those 60 hundreds have come in India colours. The other five were Delhi’s.
But the most interesting number is the one that sits between 14,000 and 15,000 runs. That stretch took 16 innings: 11 scores of 50 or more, five of them hundreds—the richest such block of his ODI life. Since he crossed 14,000, his strike rate in the format is 107.93, the highest of any thousand-run slab he has produced. The previous thousand came at 87.96. Something in the method has been loosened on purpose.
Age as a setting
Plenty of elite players reach the middle thirties and begin a discreet negotiation with decline: fewer sessions, softer language. Kohli has refused that bargain. He will admit the birthday—“I need to look after recovery”—and then treat age as a variable to be managed, not a verdict served on him. One international format. Rest periods chosen rather than endured. Long nets spoken of as ordinary work. Fitness not as a cap obligation but as the condition of a clear head.
Kohli said as much after the match. He had been challenged, late in a two-decade career, to push the scoring gear higher. The work excited him because it asked for a new version rather than a tribute act. Milestones, he insisted, were never the point; the job for the side was. Gratitude did the rest. He still names a personal but precise target: to be there and striking when India chase the 2027 World Cup.
There is a plan. Once he is set, Kohli wants the most available off each ball without crossing into slog. He has said he can play positively because he has earned the right to trust his choices. This year, he has 523 ODI runs so far, among the heaviest tallies of 2026; almost nobody above him on that list can live with his strike rate.
What Kohli changed around him
The ledger will always be runs and chases. The more stubborn mark is cultural. Before high-performance language colonised Indian dressing rooms, Kohli made fitness a public argument—diet, extra sprints, the refusal to stroll singles and push for twos. Teammates have said for years that the temperature of the group rose because he trained as if the session were the match. Kohli was not only a batsman; he was a standard other people had to stand next to.
Shubman Gill’s 110 at the other end on Sunday (September 27) was the present tense of that inheritance: a 151-run stand; India unhurried once the platform was laid, Kuldeep Yadav’s four wickets already having kept the target inside the realm of a hunt.
The next run pile
Kohli has 338 ODI runs in Thiruvananthapuram across three innings and has not been dismissed there. Tendulkar and he have 15,000-plus ODI runs. The former is done. The latter is plotting the next pile. Age will narrow some corridors—recovery windows, the volume of cricket a body will consent to. But it opens others for a player willing to adapt with invention.
Year 2027 has a template ready: fitness as habit, selection as self-management, strike rate as a choice rather than mood. The scoreboard in Kerala will yellow and be replaced. The argument it advanced will not. A late career is not obliged to be a farewell tour. It can still be a workshop. Kohli, past 15,000 runs, is still very much in.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
