India vs Sri Lanka: Rohit Sharma surpasses Martin Guptill to become leading run-scorer in T20Is

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Lucknow, February 24: India captain Rohit Sharma on Thursday (February 24) touched another high with his bat as he surpassed New Zealand opener Martin Guptill to become the leading run-scorer in T20Is.

Rohit Sharma scored invaluable 44 runs in the first T20I against Sri Lanka at the Bharat Ratna Atal Vihari Bajpayee International Stadium in Lucknow. The right-handed batsman - who started at 3263 runs in 122 T20Is - required 37 more runs to surpass his teammate Virat Kohli (3296) and Martin Guptill (3299) - ended up leapfrogging the two.

The stylish batsman from Mumbai - who also has slammed four centuries in the shortest format of the game - failed to convert the start into a big knock though. He was dismissed six runs short of his fifty when he was clean bowled by Lahiru Kumara.

The Indian captain missed the slower one from the right-arm pacer and the ball crashed into the stumps. The hosts thus lost their first wicket for 111 in the 12th over.

Had Rohit notched up his half-century, the right-handed batsman would have scored his 31st score in excess of 50. Currently, Rohit is tied with his predecessor Kohli at 30 scores of 50-plus in the T20Is.

If Rohit had scored 63 runs tonight, he would have surpassed Pakistan captain Babar Azam to become the fastest T20I captain to 1000 runs. Babar had breached the 1000-run mark in the T20Is in 26 innings. The exceedingly talented batsman from Pakistan broke Virat Kohli's record of fastest to the milestone. Kohli had amassed 1000 T20I runs in the 30th innings.

It was Rohit's 25th innings as captain but he missed the opportunity to create a big record. Before the start of this game, Rohit amassed 937 runs in 25 innings as captain at a strike rate of over 150 and at an impressive average of 40.73.