Virat Kohli has now once again resumed his march toward the greatest, Sachin Tendulkar. After a gap of 1020 days, wherein he endured perhaps the toughest phase of his career when even his place in the eleven was being questioned, Virat Kohli finally notched up his much-awaited 71st international century on Thursday in Dubai.
With skipper Rohit Sharma being rested for the dead rubber Super 4 match against Afghanistan, Virat Kohli was promoted to open. Getting the best of the pitch and the hapless, tired mentally and physically Afghanistan bowlers, Kohli was conservative at the start before slowly stepping on the paddle.
He reached his fifty in the 11th over and then with the death overs nearing, Kohli went on with a full-blown attack. After being 59 off 40 balls, the former India skipper bludgeoned the next 63 runs in only 21 balls. He remained unbeaten on 122* off 61 balls, with the help of carting around 12 fours and 6 sixes.
The uncanny similarities between Kohli’s 71st and Tendulkar’s 100th
He ended the wait of over 1000 days and spanning across 81 international innings to bring up his 71st international century, tying with the second-highest Ricky Ponting; only the master blaster, Sachin Tendulkar, is ahead with 100 hundreds.
There are quite a few uncanny similarities between Kohli’s 71st century and Tendulkar’s 100th. First, and of course, both of them had to wait for a long time to reach their landmarks: Tendulkar’s 99th century came in the 2011 World Cup after which he had to wait for over a year to get to his 100th ton against Bangladesh in the 2012 Asia Cup; Kohli’s wait laster for more than three years between his 70th and 71st.
Renowned Twitter user by the handle of “@cricBC” pointed out a major and interesting parallel between these two landmarks of India’s two greatest batters: not only these two centuries came in Asia Cups (though Tendulkar’s was in ODI format back then in 2012) – but also it came in the Asia Cup campaigns where India couldn’t reach the final!
By that means, since Pakistan won the 2012 Asia Cup defeating Bangladesh in the final – CricBC also already congratulated Pakistan in advance for winning the 2022 Asia Cup as they are already in the final and will be facing Sri Lanka this Sunday.
And yes, Pakistan won the Asia Cup in 2012 when Tendulkar scored his 100th. So, Congratulations neighbours!
— cricBC (@cricBC) September 8, 2022
Meanwhile, since Kohli got out of his rut of century less period, now the fans have again started speculating whether the 33-year-old could reach and break Tendulkar’s 100 centuries record!
