India tour of Sri Lanka 2021

18 Jul 2021

Team India captain Shikhar Dhawan joined a star-studded list of the batsmen as he completed 1000 runs against Sri Lanka in one-day international cricket at the R Premadasa stadium in Colombo on Sunday.

India are chasing 263 for victory in the ongoing first ODI after Sri Lanka posted 262 for 7 in 50 overs after chasing to bat first.

Dhawan, who is the stand-in skipper on this tour, needed 17 runs before the ongoing first ODI and he got to the milestone in the 14th over to become the 13th Indian batsman to enter the 1k club against Sri Lanka.

Overall, Dhawan is the 33rd player to reach the landmark. Sachin Tendulkar leads the list with 3113 runs from 84 ODIs followed by MS Dhoni (2383), Inzamam-ul-Haq (2265), Virat Kohli (2220) and Saeed Anwar (2198).

Mohammad Azharuddin (1834), Virender Sehwag (1699), Gautam Gambhir (1668), Rohit Sharma (1665), Rahul Dravid (1662) complete the top-10.

Sourav Ganguly (1534), Yuvraj Singh (1400), Suresh Raina (1282) and Dhawan are the rest of the Indians with over 1000 runs vs Sri Lanka in the 50-over format.

Notably, Dhawan has the best average among all other batsmen in the 1k club. The 35-year-old is the only one to average over 70 among batsmen with over a thousand runs against the islanders in ODIs.

The ODI series between Sri Lanka and India finally got underway after a 5-day delay due to the Covid-19 cases in the home team's camp earlier this month.

Sri Lanka batting coach Grand Flower and video analyst GT Niroshan tested positive for coronavirus after arriving in Colombo from England. That forced the Sri Lanka Cricket board to postpone the series which was originally scheduled to begin on July 13.

Both teams will play a series of 3 ODIs and 3 T20 internationals from July 18 to 29 in Colombo.