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Scoring over 10,000 runs across a playing career in any format of cricket is considered a significant achievement. As of May 2016, twelve players from six different teams have scored more than 10,000 runs in Test cricket. The Indians and Australians lead the list with three players each. West Indies and Sri Lanka each have two players followed by one from both South Africa and England. Bangladesh, New Zealand, Pakistan and Zimbabwe are yet to have a player breach the 10,000-run mark in the format.
In 1974, West Indies cricketer Garfield Sobers retired as Test cricket's most prolific run scorer with 8,032 runs from 93 matches. Sobers' record was surpassed nine years later by England's Geoffrey Boycott in the 1982 series against India. Boycott remained the top-scorer before being overtaken by Indian batsman Sunil Gavaskar two years later in 1983. Four years later in March 1987, Gavaskar became the first player to score 10,000 runs in the format, doing so while playing a match against Pakistan.
Brian Lara took the least number of innings (195) to reach the 10,000 run mark—later it was leveled by Sachin Tendulkar and Kumar Sangakkara—while Australia's Steve Waugh took 244 innings to achieve the feat. Alastair Cook is the fastest in terms of time span, taking 10 years and 87 days. The time taken by Shivnarine Chanderpaul (18 years and 37 days) is the slowest among all. As of August 2015, Tendulkar leads the list with 15,921 runs followed by Ricky Ponting of Australia with 13,378.