Virat Kohli within touching distance of yet another Sachin Tendulkar
Virat Kohli has been one of the best batsmen in world cricket for quite a few years now. The Indian captain, who has been accumulating heaps of runs in all forms of cricket has drawn comparisons with the legendary Sachin Tendulkar ever since the time he became a regular in the Indian team.
Sachin has always been regarded as one the biggest legends of the game, and holds numerous records in the game. Every time Virat gets a good performance on field, his achievements are compared with the ones of The Little Master. As Kohli broke the 10000 runs barrier recently in ODIs, he broke Sachin’s record of being the fastest to the milestone.
But there is another record made by Sachin Tendulkar which stands tall for 20 years now; the record for scoring the most international centuries in a single calendar year. Sachin scored as many as 12 international centuries in Tests and ODIs combined in 1998, the most prolific year in his career. No other batsman including the likes of Brian Lara or Ricky Ponting could break this record in their careers.
It is Virat Kohli who is within touching distance of this record now. Virat has already scored 10 centuries in 2018, with 3 T20Is and 3 Test matches still to go. While he has not scored any centuries in T20 internationals yet, he has been in enviable form in Test cricket. Virat scored 4 centuries in 4 matches on his last tour to Australia, and hence 3 more centuries in the first 3 Tests may not be an impossibility.
This is not even the first time Virat has come close to breaking this record. It was only in 2017 that Kohli scored 11 centuries, just one less than Sachin and equal to Ricky Ponting who also stands at the second with 11 centuries in 2003. The interesting fact is that Kohli is so close to the record even when he has not played all of India’s ODIs during the year, missing the Asia cup entirely.
With the way Kohli has been batting, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he breaks this record this year, or in the years to come. Whatever happens, Indian cricket fans should feel lucky to have an Indian breaking the world records of another Indian!