India captain Virat Kohli on Friday registered his 26th Test century and as a result, became the first Indian to score 40 hundreds as skipper. This hundred in Pune was Kohli’s 19th as India captain. He already has 21 ODI hundreds as a leader, which takes his overall tally to 40, which is only behind former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting’s tally, who had 41 centuries as the captain of Australia in international cricket. Both Kohli and Ponting have identical numbers when it comes to the distribution of hundreds in ODIs and Tests as captain. Ponting could not score a century in T20Is, Kohli too is yet to get to the three figure mark in the shortest format of the game (internationals).
Kohli brought up his ton in the 109th over of the Indian innings on Day 2 of the second Test match against South Africa. Kohli also became the fourth fastest in the world to score 26th Test tons. He beat legendary Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar to the 4th spot.
With this knock, the 30-year-old also went past former cricketer Dilip Vengasarkar in the run-scoring charts. Vengasarkar had 6,868 runs to his credit.
Kohli is now at the 53rd position in the all-time list of leading run-scorers in Test cricket.
On the first day of the second Test match, Kohli became the second Indian captain to lead the side in 50 Test matches.
He surpassed Ganguly to become the second Indian skipper to achieve the milestone.
Former skipper MS Dhoni has led the Indian side for the most number of times in the longest format of the game. He captained India for 60 matches in the Test format.
Earlier this year, Kohli surpassed Dhoni to become the most successful Indian Test captain.
The 30-year-old Kohli had 27 wins to his credit before the second Test match against West Indies, but with the win, Kohli took his tally to 28 wins in the longest format of the game.
The 30-year-old now has 29 wins from 49 matches as Test skipper. MS Dhoni had scripted 27 Test wins from 60 matches.
India had registered a comprehensive 318-run win in the first Test match against Windies and as a result, Kohli had added yet another feather to his cap, becoming the most successful Indian captain in overseas Tests.
Kohli had gone past former captain Sourav Ganguly to achieve the feat.
This was Kohli’s 12th overseas Test victory. He broke the record in his 26th match as skipper on foreign soil.Ganguly had 11 Test wins from 28 matches.
While filing this story, India had reached a score of 356/3 at the lunch break.
(With agency inputs)
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