It’s a feat only 11 other Indians have achieved in 90 years of Test cricket. It deserves to be celebrated for all the wonderful memories Kohli has given cricket fans and is also a mark of his brilliance as a batter.
Kohli himself must be delighted to have reached this milestone, for he has always given huge importance to Test cricket. (“…because this for me is real cricket”). He diligently worked to make India the best Test team in the world, in which he succeeded to a great extent. Under his seven-year captaincy reign, India dominated the opposition at home and conquered several frontiers overseas.
“I honestly never thought I would play 100 Test matches. It has been a long journey. We played a lot of cricket over the course of playing those 100 Test matches. God has been kind. I have worked really hard for my fitness. It’s a big moment for me, for my family, for my coach,” Kohli said in a video posted by the BCCI.
But Kohli will not be satisfied, for that is his nature. He is in pursuit of excellence in everything he does and all he has achieved in his cricketing career is just a byproduct of that single-minded pursuit. The hundredth Test is also just another milestone in his long journey.
In his message ahead of Kohli’s 100th Test, Sachin Tendulkar, in different words of course, also alluded to Kohli’s pursuit.
“…we played cricket together for India and not for long but whatever time we spent together, it was evident that you were keen on learning things. You kept working on your game and continued getting better,” Tendulkar told BCCI.tv.
But this milestone comes at a time when Kohli is going through possibly his second toughest phase as a cricketer. (The toughest obviously was when as a teenager he lost his father but still came to the ground to rescue the Delhi team in a Ranji Trophy game.)
Recently, he stepped down as the T20I and Test captain and was removed as the ODI captain. Though he has maintained that he relinquished captaincy to ease his workload, the circumstances and the utterances of some BCCI office-bearers made it look otherwise.
Kohli’s lean patch with the bat hasn’t helped either. He hasn’t scored a century in 932 days. His last Test century came in November 2019 and ODI century in August the same year.
That’s an anomaly. For, he is someone who has churned out centuries at a better clip than any batsman in the history of cricket.
Sample this, since his ODI debut in August 2008, Kohli has hit 43 ODI centuries. The second best in this period is Rohit Sharma with 29.
In Test cricket, since his debut in June 2011, only Kohli and Steve Smith of Australia have scored 27 centuries each. (Smith has played 77 Tests).
But if we look at the total international centuries since Kohli’s debut in 2008, he is far ahead of everyone with 70 centuries in all formats combined. South Africa’s Hashim Amla is second with 50 international centuries in the period while Australia’s David Warner third with 43 hundreds and Rohit fourth with 41.
It may not be an exaggeration to say that Kohli is the most prolific all-format century collector ever. He has scored a century every 7.25 innings, way better than the greats of the game like Sachin Tendulkar (7.82), Ricky Ponting (9.40) and Kumar Sangakkara (10.57).
On Friday, when India take on Sri Lanka in the first Test at Mohali, Kohli will step out for the 100th time in the Indian whites. He may go on to score many more centuries, but this hundred is special and deserves to be celebrated.
