The 35th century in ODIs at Centurion is a landmark one as India’s captain’s innings saw India beat South Africa by 8 wickets to end series with 5-1 victory margin. The 96 ball unbeaten 129 saw Virat Kohli hitting 19 fours and 2 sixes and made the dead rubber rather interesting. He plundered Proteas attack to all the parts of the ground and made all the difference. He is the best batsman in the world to reach 9500 ODI runs in 200 innings. In the process he caught 100 victims in ODI and made his presence felt on the field as well. Now he is behind Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar (49) in the list of number of centuries scored in ODI. He also became the first man to score 500 runs or more in a bilateral ODI series. The record was previously held by his team-mate Rohit Sharma, who scored 491 runs in the six-match series against Australia. The record of most runs as a Captain in a bilateral series now also belongs to Kohli. Australia’s George Bailey is second in the list with 478 runs against India in 2013-14. Thus the ODI series can be called Kohli series for his consistency and tall scores in the series.
Abhishek Rama
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
