- Thursday, May 08, 2025
The batter became the first Indian batter to score a World Cup on his birthday.
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA batter Virat Kohli on Sunday (5) succeeded in equalling the legendary Sachin Tendulkar’s record of 49 one-day international series in the high-profile clash with South Africa in the ICC Men’s cricket World Cup.
It was incidentally his 36th birthday when Kohli equalled the record and he became the first Indian batter to score a World Cup hundred on his birthday. Overall, it was his fourth century in the World Cup and the second in the current edition. Kohli remained not out on 101 in 121 balls to power India to 326 for 5 in 50 overs against the Proteas in their penultimate round-robin match in the marquee tournament. The India batter was the second-highest scorer in the World Cup with 543 runs in eight matches after South Africa’s Quinton de Kock’s 545 in seven.
Both India and South Africa have made the semi-finals with the former not losing a single game in the tournament.
Kohli came very close to touching Tendulkar after he scored a well-calculated hundred against Bangladesh in Pune on October 19 but failed to convert his scores (95 against New Zealand and 88 against Sri Lanka) into a three-figure mark. It was eventually at the iconic venue in Kolkata that Kohli gave billions of Indians a reason to cheer.
Kohli, however, reached the milestone of 49 ODI hundreds much quicker than Tendulkar. He took 289 matches and 277 innings to hit those hundred as against his predecessor’s 462 matches and 451 innings.
