One-day International cricket, the oldest white-ball format of the game has a rich history and is an integral part of this gentlemen’s game. This format has given cricket some of the world’s best and legendary cricketers. One group of these cricketers are the batters.
In this space, we will talk about players who reached the pinnacle of ODI batting during their respective illustrious career. These are the batters who churned out run for fun that even after end of their career, they still sit pretty on top in the run-scoring charts. Over the course, they have entertained the followers across globe by scoring truck-loads of runs.
Here are the batters with most ODI runs in history.
Most Runs in ODI Cricket
| Player | Innings | Runs | Average | 100s/50s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sachin Tendulkar (IND) | 452 | 18426 | 44.83 | 49/96 |
| Kumar Sangakkara (SL) | 380 | 14234 | 41.98 | 25/93 |
| Virat Kohli (IND) | 283 | 13906 | 58.18 | 50/72 |
| Ricky Ponting (AUS) | 365 | 13704 | 42.03 | 30/82 |
| Sanath Jayasuriya (SL) | 433 | 13430 | 32.36 | 28/68 |
| Mahela Jayawardene (SL) | 418 | 12650 | 33.37 | 19/77 |
| Inzamam-ul-Haq (PAK) | 350 | 11739 | 39.52 | 10/83 |
| Jacques Kallis (SA) | 314 | 11579 | 44.36 | 17/86 |
| Sourav Ganguly (IND) | 300 | 11363 | 41.02 | 22/72 |
| Rahul Dravid (IND) | 318 | 10889 | 39.16 | 12/83 |
Key Stats
15: The number of players to have amassed 10,000 or more runs in ODI cricket. The other names in the list are current Indian skipper Rohit Sharma, MS Dhoni (10773), Chris Gayle (10480), Brian Lara (10405), and TM Dilshan (10290).
Other retired players like Adam Gilchrist (9619), AB de Villiers (9577), and Mohammad Yousuf (9720) missed out on entering this elite feat. If we keep the criteria of the number of runs to be 5000, then 98 batters have made at least 5000 ODI career runs.
58.18: Virat Kohli has the best career batting average for batters with more than 5000 runs, followed by current Pakistani batter Babar Azam and Michael Bevan (53.58).
Kohli has scored the most tons in ODI cricket (you can check them all here), and he eclipsed the legendary tally of 49 centuries set by the legendary Indian batter Sachin Tendulkar. Find here how many more times Sachin Tendulkar came close to scoring yet another century across formats.
117.11: Jos Buttler’s batting strike rate in ODIs is the highest for a batter with more than 5000 runs, and next comes Shahid Afridi with a batting SR of 117.00 in ODIs.
145: Sachin Tendulkar has the most 50+ plus scores (including 100s) in ODI cricket. Only 4 other cricketers have more than 100 scores of 50 or above in ODI cricket, namely Kohli, Sangakkara, Ponting and Kallis.
