Sometimes, as when he twice missed the three-figure mark by a whisker earlier in the tournament, the stars seem to conspire against you. Sometimes, as at the Eden Gardens this ecstatic Sunday evening, the evening of his 35 birthday, they form a happy concatenation.
Welcome, Virat Kohli, to a station whence you proceed to where no cricketer has ever been before. The next time he scores a one-day hundred, he would have beaten the man he has idolised as a fanboy and treated on the field of play as mentor: Sachin Tendulkar.
The electronic scoreboard at the Eden Gardens took a while to flash it on its big screen but Virat Kohli had already completed the single after punching Kagiso Rabada to extra cover to reach his 49th ODI hundred.
A half-hearted raise of the bat after taking his helmet off, Kohli displayed his phlegmatic self, the beads of sweat on his forehead trickling down his face as he looked upwards to thank the Lord.
The current year has been good for Kohli, this was his fifth ODI century of 2023
after just one in 2022 which came after three years of self-doubt and of course the pandemic.
But this was a different Kohli. There was no display of his pumped fists or the trademark roar which has often inspired his teammates on the field and prompted the spectators to go wild in the stands. There was also no pointing of the bat or blowing of kisses towards the pavilion — wife Anushka Sharma wasn’t present today.
Was it the energy-sapping humidity that stopped him from a display of emotion on equalling Sachin Tendulkar’s total number of ODI centuries? Or was it out of reverence for the Master Blaster?
Kohli, whose first ODI hundred was also at the Eden — 107 against Sri Lanka back in 2009 — later admitted it was the “stuff of dreams” to equal Tendulkar on his 35th birthday and “something you wish as a child”.
Kohli’s feat today can be compared to what batting legend Sunil Gavaskar achieved when he equalled Sir Donald Bradman’s tally of 29 Test centuries — then a record — against the West Indies at the Kotla in 1983.
Gavaskar seldom looked at the scoreboard during his playing days. He didn’t set targets and as a result didn’t realise what he had achieved until non-striker Dilip Vengsarkar came up and congratulated him. Gavaskar simply raised his bat, and batted on.
Much like the modern-day master batter did at a packed Eden on Sunday where the crowd of about 66,000 had started chanting “Kohli, Kohli” much before he had crawled into the nineties.
The decibel levels in the crowd had cranked up beyond imagination even as the DJ kept playing popular numbers at full blast.
Following Kohli’s 48th ODI century against Bangladesh in Pune, it had taken another four innings to achieve the milestone. A 95 in Dharamsala was followed by a
duck in Lucknow and an 88 in Mumbai.
Kohli wanted it to happen at the Wankhede in front of Tendulkar but was left heartbroken. No amount of consolation from coach Rahul Dravid and his teammates was enough for him to forget it in a hurry.
As numbers go, 23 of Kohli’s 49 centuries have come at home with 21 coming on foreign shores. The other five were achieved on neutral territory. Kohli got his 49 in 277 innings, Tendulkar took 451.
Kohli’s innings could be divided into several phases. He started off in a flash, reaching 18 off 14 balls with four boundaries. He then slowed down considerably after the first powerplay.
South Africa’s spinners, Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi, put a spanner in his scoring ways allowing just 42, including a solitary four, off the next 64 balls. It was more of grinding, picking the gaps and running the singles.
But Kohli hung in and accelerated once the seamers returned and brought up his hundred off 119 balls. It was mainly because of his unbeaten 101 and the bowlers’ performance that India made mincemeat of South Africa.
“Well played Virat. It took me 365 days to go from 49 to 50 earlier this year. I hope you go from 49 to 50 and break my record in the next few days. Congratulations!!” Tendulkar wrote on X shortly after the hundred.
Kohli too didn’t forget to thank him after the match. Tendulkar’s message “is quite special. It’s all too much to take in for now.... He’s perfection with the bat. It’s an emotional moment,” Kohli said.
Tendulkar always said he would be happy as long as his record was eclipsed by an Indian. Kohli is set to take the plunge and a World Cup knockout game would be a fitting tribute to the Master.
