Virat Kohli Scored 1st ODI 100 On This Day: Today is December 24, 2024. On this exact date in 2009, Virat Kohli scored the first century of his international career for the Indian cricket team in ODIs. Now, 15 years on, he is the most successful batter in the history of ODI cricket.
Kohli needs no introduction. Arguably the greatest batsman of this generation and certainly the greatest Indian batter of the 21st century (Sachin Tendulkar was great across the 20th and 21st centuries).
The former Indian captain has over 27,000 runs in international cricket, won the T20 and the ODI World Cup, is a Champions Trophy winner, scored over 1000 runs in ODIs and Tests separately on several occasions, and has been the top-ranked batter in the world for a long time.
Virat Kohli Scored 1st ODI 100 On This Day
But this was not the case in 2009. Back then, he was a 21-year-old batter from Delhi with much potential but not much to show for it. The previous year, he had won the U-19 World Cup as the Indian captain and had been a domestic cricket standout.
Despite not being much liked by his fellow cricketers by his own admission, there was undeniable talent in that loudmouth Delhi batter.
On December 24, 2009, India took on Sri Lanka in the fourth match of a five-ODI series between the two nations. The match was being played at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Kohli was just 13 matches deep in his ODI career. So far, he had scored three 50s in this format, including a 54-run inning in just the previous match of this series.
Sri Lanka batted first on that day and put up a fine total of 315/6 in 50 overs thanks to a century by Upal Tharanga and 60 runs by Kumar Sangakkara. Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra took two wickets each.
With India having to chase a big total, Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar walked out to open the inning. However, Sehwag departed early. And before the fourth over ended and the team at 23, Sachin was dismissed as well.
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This brought the duo of Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli to the pitch fairly early. While today, we see them as on-field rivals and now a coach/player pairing, back then, it was just two batters from Delhi; one was a veteran while the other was a newbie to international cricket.
What happened next was incredible; the two stitched together a solid 224-run partnership for the third wicket. Virat Kohli scored 107 runs off 114 deliveries, which was not only his first century in ODIs but his first while representing the Indian Cricket Team.
And while it was Gambhir who was named the Player of the Match that day for scoring an unbeaten 150, he decided to share this award with the person who scored his first ton in international cricket that day.
What followed was probably the best career in ODI cricket for the next decade and a half. Almost 14 years after the first century of the format, on November 15, 2023, Kohli scored a 117 against New Zealand at the Wankhede Stadium in a 2023 Cricket World Cup match, which was his 50th century in ODIs, surpassing Sachin Tendulkar’s record 49 in the format.
Today, not only does Virat Kohli have the most 100s in ODI cricket, but he also has 13,906 runs in 295 ODIs, putting him in third on the all-time list of runs in the format. But unlike Tendulkar and Sangakkara above him on this list, who have over 400 matches and averages in the low 40s, Virat has a massive average of 58.18 in ODI cricket.
Check Out: Virat Kohli Scored 1st ODI 100 On This Day
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