India’s limited-overs squad under their new captain Shikhar Dhawan has started the tour of Sri Lanka with a clinical victory in the first ODI of the three-match series at Colombo.

The visitors won the match by 7 wickets while chasing a target of 263 runs with 13.2 over spare, as the Indian captain scored the winning runs and registering the highest score of the match at 86 not out.

With a composed match-winning innings, Dhawan became the fifth Indian to score 10,000 international runs as an opener and joined the elite club of Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Rohit Sharma.

The left-hander batter also became the second-fastest Indian and tenth Indian overall to score 6,000 runs in ODIs. He also became the fastest Indian to score 1,000 ODI runs against Sri Lanka.

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Shikhar Dhawan (86* off 95 balls) and Ishan Kishan (59 off 42 balls) starred with the bat for India as they registered their fifties, but the tone was set at the beginning of the chase by Prithvi Shaw, who smoked 9 boundaries as he scored 43 runs off just 24 deliveries.

Earlier in the match, Indian bowlers kept striking at regular intervals and restricted Sri Lanka to 262/9 in 50 overs. This was Sri Lanka’s highest score in ODIs without any player reaching the 50-run mark, thanks to the unbeaten 43-run knock from Chamika Karunaratne. For India, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Deepak Chahar bagged 2 wickets each while the Pandya brothers had 1 wicket each to their name.

Shikhar Dhawan is India’s 25th ODI captain and thus became the oldest Indian on captaincy debut. With 1-0 lead in the series, the Dhawan-led side would next face the hosts on Tuesday (20^th July) at the same venue and will try to seal the ODI series with another victory.