Virat Kohli set to expand his legacy, awaits elusive T20 batting landmark in IPL 2021

Virat Kohli is a legend of the game by every stretch of the imagination. The India captain has shattered several batting records along the way, becoming the fastest to 8000, 9000, 10000, 11000 and 12000 runs in ODI cricket, while achieving the highest ODI, Test and T20I rating among any Indian batsman in history.

Those are some of his achievements that speak volumes about his India career. Now let's shift focus to the IPL. With 5878 runs, Kohli is the leading run-getter in the IPL, above IPL legends Rohit Sharma, David Warner and Suresh Raina. Behind MS Dhoni, Rohit, Raina and Dinesh Karthik, Kohli is the fifth most-capped IPL player in history with 192 matches. And in the upcoming edition of the IPL, Kohli has a chance to shatter another batting record, and this one would be quite something.

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The RCB captain is 269 runs away from completing 10000 runs in T20 cricket, and provided he gets there, Kohli will become the first Indian batsman to climb Mount 10K in all T20 cricket, joining T20 legends such as Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard and Shoaib Malik. Also inching towards that 10K mark is Sunrisers Hyderabad captain Warner, who is 176 runs away from the landmark.

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With 13720 runs, Gayle leads the top of the charts having represented a whopping 27 different franchises. Next is his West Indies teammate Pollard, who has 10629 runs followed by Pakistan great Malik with 10488 runs. Former New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum and Australia's Warner are ahead of Kohli but they too have represented more than 10 T20 teams each. Kohli, surprisingly, has only played for four T20 teams in his life – Delhi, India, Indians and RCB – and has an astonishing tally of 9731 runs.

There are several other feats that await Kohli. He is eight matches away from completing 200 IPL matches and 122 runs away from registering 6000 IPL runs. The news of Kohli opening the batting for RCB bodes well for the franchise as the batsman averages 46.9 as an opener in IPL with a strike-rate of 140.2. Furthermore, Kohli is six half-centuries away from completing 50 fifty-plus scores in IPL.