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Virat Kohli of Royal Challengers Bengaluru has become the first player to score 9000 runs for a single team in T20s.
Virat Kohli has been in sublime form in IPL 2025 (Picture credit: AP)
Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) superstar Virat Kohli has become the first player in the world to score 9000 runs for a single team in T20s. He achieved the record while batting against the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) at the Ekana Stadium in the last league stage game of IPL 2025 on May 27.
Kohli reached the milestone with a pull shot for four past mid-on against Avesh Khan in his 271st innings for the franchise. No batter in the world has come close to such a number for just one team. The second-best in the world is Rohit Sharma for the Mumbai Indians — 6060 runs in 230 innings.
This record is as much a testimony of his consistency as it is of his loyalty to RCB. Though they haven’t won titles together, Kohli is the only player in the IPL who has been connected with just one franchise from its inception in 2008. He has declared several times that he’d be an RCB man until he’s playing cricket.
RCB were chasing the mammoth score of 228, hoping to win the match and secure their place in the top two. He started a tad slowly in the first over but hit four consecutive boundaries against Will O’Rourke in the second to get himself going. RCB lost Phil Salt in the last over of the powerplay but ended it with 66/1.
“In terms of desires, everything is okay, but not this (being with RCB),” he told RCB’s website about his love for the franchise earlier this year. “The but is never going to go away. So, I thought, fine, what is of more value to me today? Do I want to go to a new set-up and try to figure out life again? And I don’t know how the system is going to be, how people are going to treat me. So, I felt, you know what, for me what’s more valuable is the relationship and the mutual respect that has been created over so many years. The love that I have received from the fans, I don’t think any silverware or any trophy can come close to that,” he added.
Kohli is also RCB’s highest run-scorer this year and is strongly in the Orange Cap race.
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