He is an epitome of modern day cricket royalty. No cricketer in the world at present carries the ‘King’ tag with his name. Forget about the two other versions of international cricket – Tests and T20s, in the ODI format Kohli is the real ‘King’, a player who mesmerises bowlers with his batting symphony.
Kohli equalled Sachin Tendulkar’s feat of 49 ODI hundreds at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on his 35th birthday. On a day, he is supposed to receive gifts Kohli gave the passionate Kolkata crowd a century to cherish and made them a part of history.
The 70,000-odd people at the ‘Mecca of Indian cricket’ became witness to history, as Kohli marched majestically to the three-figure mark. They had been chanting ‘Kohli… Kohli…’ since the Indian team arrived in Kolkata a couple of days back. No one else mattered to them, not even home boy Mohammed Shami. Now Kohli has reposed the faith showered on him.
The start was not fluent as one would expect of Kohli. Kagiso Rabada beat him a couple of times outside the off-stump. However, once Kohli came to terms with the pitch, he realised that shot-making would be difficult. The result was that only 40 of his unbeaten 101 runs came in boundaries. The rest were the efforts of a supremely fit man at 35 who ran the second and third runs with the same fleet-footedness that he did the first.
There had been discussions that it would have been better if Kohli had got the record-equalling ton in the game against Sri Lanka at Mumbai in front of Tendulkar. Probably not, because the cricketing gods had other ideas. Kohli’s journey of ODI centuries started from Eden Gardens itself when he got his first one against Sri Lanka December 24, 2009. There couldn’t have been a better place for Kohli to match the feat of Tendulkar.
However, should this be called matching of a feat? It took Tendulkar 451 ODI innings to get 49 centuries while Kohli has done so in just his 277th. No one knows, how many tons Kohli will get if he goes on to play the same number of games like Tendulkar did.
Kohli’s Sachin praaji was quick to congratulate the former on ‘X’. “It took me 365 days to score my a hundred after I got my 49th in ODIs. I hope you break my record and get your 50th ODI hundred in the next few days. Congratulations,” Tendulkar wrote.
For a man, who burst on to the cricket scene by leading India to the World Cup under-19 title more than 15 years ago, Kohli has indeed come a long way. He definitely has set the benchmark for the next generation of cricketers like Shubman Gills and the Yashasvi Jaiswal’s.
Kohli described his feat has ‘it’s stuff of dreams’ as he touched the man he always idolised. “Every opportunity to play for India is big one for me. To be able to do that (49th hundred) on my birthday, in front of the whole crowd, it’s stuff of dreams, something that as a child you wish had happened,” Kohli said after the completion of the Indian innings.
He couldn’t have been closer to the truth.
M I R 100s 50s SR
Virat Kohli 289 277 13,626 49 70 93.63
Sachin Tendulkar 463 452 18,426 49 96 86.23
Sakyasen Mittra