Virat Kohli roars back to form with 17th Test century

Virat Kohli scored his 10th century as captain after becoming the fastest to reach 1000 runs away from home as skipper.


Virat Kohli brought up his 17th century in Test cricket with a single off Dilruwan Perera as India declared their second innings at 240/3 to set Sri Lanka a massive 550-run target in the first Test at Galle.
Having finished Day three unbeaten on 76, the Indian captain eased to his 10th triple figure mark as captain, after losing opener Abhinav Mukund (81) on the last over of play the previous day.
India resumed the second innings on 189/3 and both Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane started off aggressively to bring up a quick unbeaten 51-run stand for the fourth wicket. Kohli had earlier added 133 runs for the third wicket with Mukund on Day 3 after India bowled out Sri Lanka for 291 and took a lead of 309 runs but surprisingly did not enforce the follow-on.
Skipper Kohli was going through a lean patch of sorts for the past eight innings but roared back to form on Saturday, this being his first Test innings of significance since the double hundred against Bangladesh in Hyderabad in February this year. He had scored just 46 runs in five innings against Australia in the Border-Gavaskar series earlier this year.
The 28-year-old took over the reins of the Indian Test side back in December 2014 from Mahendra Singh Dhoni, after the latter announced his retirement in the middle of the Australia tour.
The first time he took guard as captain, he scored a confident 115 and returned in the second innings with another 141 against Australia in the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at Adelaide. He scored another two hundreds on that tour and finished as the second highest run-getter behind Steve Smith (769) with 694 runs in four matches at 86.50 but India lost the series 0-2.
Twenty-five Test matches and 40 innings later, Kohli has managed to score 10 Test hundreds, which includes four double hundreds in the recently concluded home season for India. Six of those 10 hundreds have come in away Test matches as captain.
During his knock on Day 3, Kohli also became the quickest among India captains to reach 1000 Test runs on foreign soil, breaking Sachin Tendulkar's record. He reached the milestone in just 17 innings while Tendulkar took 19 innings to get there with only Gary Sobers (13), Alistair Cook (14) and Bob Simpson (16) managing to do it quicker time.
Earlier in July, Kohli broke Tendulkar's record for most hundreds in chases during the fifth and final One-Day International against West Indies in Jamaica.
While The Little Master took 232 innings to score 17 hundreds, Kohli got there in just 102 innings to score 18 ODI tons while batting second.

No comments:

Post a Comment