8000 runs in ODIs: Tamim joins elite company

En route to his 88-ball-62 against Zimbabwe in the first ODI in Harare, Tamim Iqbal has become the first batter from Bangladesh to reach the milestone of 8000 runs in ODIs. The current ODI captain of the side, Tamim is just the ninth opener in the world to achieve the feat. The southpaw is overall the 33rd batter in this format, scoring 8000 or more. 

The left-hander has taken 227 innings to reach the 8000-run mark which is the joint-15th fastest overall by a batter. 

Tamim is only the fifth Asian batter to score 8000 runs in the opening position. The other four are - India's Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, Sri Lanka's Sanath Jayasuriya and Pakistan's Saeed Anwar.

The West Indies have two openers - Chris Gayle and Desmond Haynes - scoring more than 8000 runs. Adam Gilchrist is the only Australian opener to achieve the feat. South Africa's only opening batter to reach the milestone is Hashim Amla, who happens to be the second-quickest to 8000 runs (off 176 innings). Virat Kohli is the fastest batter to enter the club (off 175 innings). Interestingly, no opener from New Zealand and England has achieved the feat. 

India have the highest number of batters reaching milestone (8) while Sri Lanka have six, Pakistan, West Indies and South Africa four, Australia three and New Zealand two. No England batter has achieved the feat with recently-retired Eoin Morgan leading the pack with 6957 runs. 

Tamim took 37 innings to reach 1000 ODI runs. The southpaw needed 33 more innings to score the second 1000 runs. The ODI captain played 32, 35, 21, 17, 29 and 23 innings to touch the subsequent milestones of 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000 and 8000 runs respectively. 

When Tamim reached the 8000-run milestone, he averaged 37.2. Tamim is, of course, the highest run-getter for Bangladesh in ODIs. Shakib Al Hasan is the name in the list with 6755 runs.