India already have the trophy that mattered most in 2026 — a second straight T20 World Cup, sealed with a 96-run demolition of New Zealand in Ahmedabad. But trophies are not the only things being collected this year. Several Indian careers are parked right next to major records, and the back half of the calendar, stacked with ODIs against West Indies, Sri Lanka and New Zealand, gives them every chance to tick the boxes. Here are the big ones worth tracking.
Virat Kohli and the 15,000-run club
Start with the obvious one. Kohli entered 2026 with 14,557 ODI runs, second on the all-time list behind Sachin Tendulkar’s 18,426, and then immediately added 240 runs in three innings against New Zealand, including a vintage 124 in Indore. Only Tendulkar has ever reached 15,000 runs in one-day cricket. With India’s calendar offering a generous run of ODIs through the rest of the year, Kohli crossing the line feels less a question of if than of when and where. A hamstring problem kept him out of the Afghanistan series in June and slowed the march a little, but at his career scoring rate the milestone is close enough to touch. When it arrives, he becomes just the second member of a club that has had exactly one member for more than a decade.
Second on the all-time run charts
The other Kohli number is arguably even bigger. He began the year needing just 42 runs to overtake Kumar Sangakkara’s 28,016 and become the second-highest run-scorer in the history of international cricket. That box was ticked almost immediately — the New Zealand series took care of it — and every innings he plays now simply pads the gap. Ahead of him stands only Tendulkar, on a scarcely believable 34,257. Nobody sane expects that record to fall. But ‘second only to Sachin’ is quite the line to have on a CV, and Kohli is writing it in permanent ink this year.
Rohit Sharma’s late-career checklist
At 39, Rohit is down to one format and still playing it like he owns it. As of June he sat on 11,593 ODI runs, needing just 147 to overtake Inzamam-ul-Haq and climb another rung on the all-time list — the kind of target he can knock over in one good afternoon. The sixes record is already his: he went past Shahid Afridi’s mark of 351 last November, and at 352 and counting, every ball he deposits into the crowd stretches a world record that may outlive everyone currently playing.
There is a quirkier one on the list too. Rohit has 37 unbeaten ODI innings; three more and he moves clear of Ricky Ponting, Allan Border and Mahela Jayawardene, who share the mark at 39. With roughly a dozen ODIs left on India’s 2026 schedule and a home World Cup in 2027 as the carrot, it would take a brave person to rule any of it out.
Bumrah’s numbers game
Jasprit Bumrah’s 2026 has already been historic. His 4 for 15 in the World Cup final were the best bowling figures the tournament’s title match has ever seen, and they came on the biggest night of the year. Then, in July, he returned to ODI cricket after a gap of nearly three years and struck almost immediately, dismissing Harry Brook at Edgbaston for his 150th ODI wicket — a dismissal that also made him India’s leading ODI wicket-taker on English soil, with 31. The frustrating part, as ever, is the body: a fresh injury has ruled him out of the Sri Lanka Tests. But the pattern of his career is well established by now. Whenever Bumrah is on the park, wickets and records arrive together, and the climb up India’s all-time bowling charts continues in every format he touches.
The watch list
Beyond the big three, keep an eye on Yashasvi Jaiswal, who is stacking Test runs at an age where every milestone comes with a ‘youngest Indian’ tag attached, and Kuldeep Yadav, quietly assembling one of the better modern white-ball bowling records one series at a time. Sanju Samson deserves a mention too — his eight sixes against New Zealand in March were the most ever hit in a T20 World Cup final, part of a tournament that ended with him as Player of the Tournament and India as the first three-time champions in the event’s history.
And then there is Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who is not so much breaking existing records as inventing a category of his own, because nobody his age has ever done what he is doing at senior level. The trophies were won in March. The record books get rewritten for the rest of the year — and on current form, several of these entries will not survive until December
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