England, the top-ranked One Day International (ODI) team and high on confidence after mauling Australia 5-0 in the 50-over format, inflicted the first ever bilateral series loss to India under captain Virat Kohli by winning the third match at Headingley, Leeds on Tuesday to pocket the series 2-1. Kohli and his team had come to England after a successful run of nine bilateral ODI series wins. The world number 2 ranked team in ODIs got a boost following the 2-1 T20I series win against England and were hoping to repeat the same in the ODIs.
India got off to a great start in the ODI series winning the first ODI on July 12 at Trent Bridge, Nottingham by eight wickets. But England came back strongly to win the second and third matches at Lord’s and Headingley by 86 runs and eight wickets respectively.
The last bilateral ODI series that India lost was in early 2016 against Australia, in Australia. The Australians had won the five-match series 4-1.
The win against India is England’s eighth consecutive bilateral ODI series victory. Their last bilateral ODI series loss had come against India in 2016 when they went down 1-2.
However, despite the match and series loss, Kohli got his name in the record books by becoming the fastest captain to complete 3,000 runs in ODIs during his innings of 71. Kohli reached the landmark of 3,000 runs in 49 innings. Former South Africa skipper AB de Villiers and former India skipper MS Dhoni, too, have 3,000 runs as captain. But Ab de Villiers achieved the milestone in 60 innings, Dhoni took 70 innings.
Kohli was also the fastest to reach 1,000 and 2,000 ODI runs as captain. He scored 1,000 runs as captain when he scored 55 off 63 balls in the third ODI against England at Eden Gardens in 2017. He completed 2,000 runs too in 2017 against Australia in the fourth ODI in Bengaluru. The right-hander took 17 innings for the 1,000-run mark and used 36 innings to notch up 2,000 runs as captain.
Source: Zee News