SL vs IND: Cheteshwar Pujara becomes joint second-fastest Indian to score 4000 Test runs; goes past Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli

The Saurashtrian took just 84 innings to amass the score, thus becoming joint second-fastest Indian batsman to do so. Legendary Rahul Dravid also took same number of innings to achieve the feat.

PTI

New Delhi: New Delhi: Cheteshwar Pujara on Thursday became the joint second-fastest Indian to score 4,000 Test runs during first day's play of second Test against Sri Lanka at Colombo.

The 29-year-old achieved this feat in the 43rd over, bowled by Malinda Pushpakumara, of India's first innings. Pujara first sliced a four down to third man region and then took a single off the fourth delivery, thus bringing up his 4000th Test run.

The Saurashtra batsman took just 84 innings to amass these runs, thus becoming the joint second-fastest Indian batsman to do so. Legendary Rahul Dravid also took same number of innings to achieve the feat.

Both the middle-order batsmen are behind former openers Virender Sehwag and Sunil Gavaskar in the all-time list of Indian batsmen. Both the openers completed their respective feats in 81 innings each.

However, Pujara has overtaken Sachin Tendulkar and his captain Virat Kohli in the list.

Pujara is the 15th Indian batsman to achieve this feat. 

More to add, the right-handed batsman is the sixth Indian to average over 50 while scoring 4000 runs, finding his name after Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Dravid, Sehwag and Kohli. His average stands as 52.18.

Earlier in the day, Kohli won the toss and opted to bat. India ended day's play at 344/3 with Ajinkya Rahane (103) and Pujara (128) unbeaten.