Indian captain Rohit Sharma created a new history in the third ODI match against Afghanistan in Chennai. He broke the record held by former Indian opener Virender Sehwag by becoming the highest run-scoring batsman as an opener for India in international cricket. While Rohit Sharma had 15,994 runs as an opener before this series, he became the second Indian batsman to reach the milestone of 16,000 runs as an opener by scoring 6 runs in the first ODI match.
Rohit Sharma, who scored 16 runs in that match and 48 runs in the second ODI, played an excellent innings of 79 runs in the third ODI. With this, his total runs as an opener reached 16,137. Rohit has overtaken Virender Sehwag, who has 16,119 runs as an opener for India so far, to take the top spot. In this list, Sachin Tendulkar (15,335) is at the third position, Sunil Gavaskar (12,258) is at the fourth position, Shikhar Dhawan (10,867) is at the fifth position, and Sourav Ganguly (9,157) is at the sixth position.
Rohit Sharma has also overtaken West Indies legend Desmond Haynes (16,120) to become fifth in the list of batsmen who have scored the most runs as an opener in international cricket worldwide. Sri Lanka’s Sanath Jayasuriya is on the first position with 19,298 runs, followed by Chris Gayle (18,867), David Warner (18,744) and Graeme Smith (16,950) in the fourth position. Rohit Sharma, who batted in the middle order at the start of his career, surpassed this historic milestone after switching to the opener with impressive performances in all three formats.