Sachin Tendulkar leads men’s international cricket with 34,357 runs

Sachin Tendulkar holds the men’s record for most international career runs: 34,357 across Tests, one-day internationals and T20 internationals. He scored them in 664 matches and 782 batting innings. Virat Kohli is second with 28,527 in the ESPNcricinfo combined-format records, checked on 8 October 2026.

Here, “highest international runs” means a batter’s career aggregate, not their highest score in one innings. It adds runs credited to the batter in the three international formats; domestic and franchise cricket are excluded.

Most international runs: the men’s top 10

Rank	Player	Matches	Batting innings	Runs	Batting average
1	Sachin Tendulkar	664	782	34,357	48.52
2	Virat Kohli	564	631	28,527	52.92
3	Kumar Sangakkara	594	666	28,016	46.77
4	Ricky Ponting	560	668	27,483	45.95
5	Mahela Jayawardene	652	725	25,957	39.15
6	Jacques Kallis	519	617	25,534	49.10
7	Rahul Dravid	509	605	24,208	45.41
8	Joe Root	396	523	23,074	49.72
9	Brian Lara	430	521	22,358	46.28
10	Sanath Jayasuriya	586	651	21,032	34.14

Source: ESPNcricinfo’s career runs table for Tests + ODIs + T20Is, retrieved 8 October 2026. Averages are reproduced as published. Totals include recognised internationals for representative sides such as Asia XI and ICC World XI, where applicable—not just appearances for a national team. Active players’ figures can change.

Matches and innings are different counts. A Test can offer two batting innings, while an ODI or T20I offers at most one; a player can also appear in a match without batting. The innings column therefore gives a clearer view of batting opportunity than matches alone.

Kohli moved ahead of Sangakkara during India’s first ODI against New Zealand in January 2026. His 93 took him to 28,068 at that point, according to the ICC’s match report. That milestone total is not his current figure: the October snapshot above puts him 5,830 runs behind Tendulkar.

How Tendulkar’s 34,357 runs add up

Tendulkar’s career statistics separate the record into:

• Tests: 15,921 runs in 200 matches and 329 innings.
• ODIs: 18,426 runs in 463 matches and 452 innings.
• T20Is: 10 runs in one match and one innings.

The calculation is simply 15,921 + 18,426 + 10 = 34,357. His franchise T20 runs do not belong in that sum. Nor should first-class and List A totals be added: those broader categories already include Test and ODI performances respectively, so doing so would double-count runs.

Tendulkar also holds the men’s Test career runs record, but 15,921, rather than 34,357, is the relevant number for that comparison. Our Test career run leaders and ODI career run leaders keep those rankings separate.

What the combined total does—and does not—measure

Career runs measure accumulated production. They reward both scoring and sustained opportunity; they are not an era-adjusted ranking of batting quality.

The average column answers a different question: how many runs did the batter score per dismissal? Tendulkar had 74 not-outs in 782 international innings, giving 708 dismissals. His combined average is therefore 34,357 ÷ 708 = 48.5268…. The combined records table displays this as 48.52, truncating rather than rounding to two decimal places.

That is not the simple mean of his three format averages. Nor is it his Test average, which was 53.78 in his career statistics. See how to calculate batting average for the treatment of not-outs.

Format mix matters when comparing players. Tendulkar’s record contains just one T20I innings, whereas other careers have a different balance of long-form and limited-overs opportunities. An all-format average pools those different tasks; it does not make them equivalent.

For a Test comparison, use Test-only runs and dismissals, then examine opposition, home and away conditions, batting position and era. Neither the aggregate nor the combined average adjusts for those factors. The table establishes who accumulated the most international runs—not, by itself, who was the best Test batter.