Kohli’s first innings for India was 12 in Dambulla, and it is 18 years old today
On 18 August 2008 a 19-year-old opened India’s batting at Dambulla, made 12, and finished on the wrong side of an eight-wicket defeat. Eighteen years on, nobody in the game has scored more one-day hundreds.
Aug 18, 2026
Virat Kohli’s first innings for India lasted 22 balls. He was 19 years old, opening at Dambulla because two senior batters were unavailable, and Nuwan Kulasekara pinned him in front for 12 in the eighth over. India were bowled out for 146 and lost by eight wickets. The date was 18 August 2008, which makes that innings 18 years old today.
Why a teenager was opening an ODI innings
Sachin Tendulkar had been ruled out of the one-day series with a left elbow injury picked up while fielding in the third Test, and Virender Sehwag twisted an ankle in practice before the first game. That left India a top-order batter short and looking at a 19-year-old who had captained the Under-19 side to the World Cup in Kuala Lumpur in March that year.
Kohli walked out with Gautam Gambhir and had barely settled before he was on his own. Gambhir was bowled by Chaminda Vaas for a two-ball duck in the first over. Kohli lasted until the eighth, when Kulasekara got one to hit him on the pad and India were 23 for 2.
What followed was worse. Ajantha Mendis took 3 for 21 and Muttiah Muralitharan 3 for 37, nobody in the MS Dhoni-led side passed 23, and India were done for 146 in 46 overs after choosing to bat. Mahela Jayawardene made an unbeaten 61 and Sri Lanka got there with 91 balls to spare.
Nothing about the day marked the debutant out. India had lost the Test series 2-1 on the same tour, mostly to Mendis, and it was Mendis who took the player-of-the-match award in Dambulla too. The story of that August was a mystery spinner, not a 19-year-old making 12.
The rest of that fortnight in Sri Lanka
He kept his place for all five matches and improved through them, finishing with 159 runs at an average of 31.80 and his first international fifty, made in Colombo once the series moved to the R Premadasa. India won it 3-2.
A first series of 159 runs is the sort of return that earns a young batter another look rather than a place in the side. The hundred took a while longer. It arrived in his 14th ODI, at Eden Gardens on 24 December 2009, when he made 107 off 114 balls and added 224 with Gambhir.
Eighteen years, three careers, two of them closed
Two of Kohli’s three international ledgers are now final. He played his last T20 international in June 2024, retiring after India won the World Cup with 4,188 runs at 48.69 from 125 matches and one century. He retired from Test cricket in May 2025 on 9,230 runs at 46.85 from 123 matches, with 30 hundreds, seven of them double centuries.
The one-day column is the one still moving. Through India’s series in England in July, he had played 314 ODIs for 14,941 runs at an average just under 59, with 54 centuries. No batter has scored more hundreds in the format, and only Tendulkar, on 100, has more international centuries than Kohli’s 85.
The number that captures the pace of it
Career totals flatten everything into one figure, so here is a better one. Kohli reached every thousand-run marker in ODI cricket from 8,000 to 14,000 in fewer innings than any batter before him. He got to 10,000 in his 205th innings, bringing it up with an unbeaten 157 against West Indies at Visakhapatnam in October 2018. Tendulkar needed 259 innings for the same mark.
Then there is the shape of the record rather than its size. A large share of those 54 hundreds were made batting second, chasing a target, which runs against the way most great one-day records are built. Setting a total carries no closing equation and no scoreboard doing arithmetic at you. Kohli’s ledger leans the other way, which is why the Chase Master line stuck instead of fading out as a commentary tic.
What is left of it
He is 37 and plays one format, which puts a reasonably clear frame around what remains. Tendulkar’s 18,426 ODI runs sit 3,485 away, a gap that would take something close to two more full seasons at the volume Kohli produced in his early thirties. The 2027 World Cup, in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia from 4 October, is the obvious destination, and on the evidence of his last 12 months the runs have not gone anywhere.
What an anniversary like this is good for is the reminder of how unremarkable the beginning looked. India are in Sri Lanka again this month, playing a Test at Galle. Anyone who watched the 12 in Dambulla in 2008 and was told the batter would retire from two formats as one of the most decorated cricketers the country has produced, and still hold the record for one-day hundreds, would have asked for a second opinion.