Virat Kohli finally ended a wait for his 49th ODI century by smashing an unbeaten hundred against South Africa on Sunday, November 5. Celebrating his 35th birthday, Kohli equalled legendary Sachin Tendulkar's elite record for most ODI centuries to script history at Kolkata's iconic Eden Gardens.
The cricket fraternity took social media by storm with congratulatory posts for the star batter. Sachin himself took no time to congratulate his former teammate with an eye-catching post on his Twitter handle. Sachin lauded Virat for equalling one of the biggest records and tipped him to bring the 50th century in the next few days.
"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," Sachin Tendulkar wrote in his Tweet.
Virat Kohli described his hundred on birthday as a dream come true and thanked God for blessing him with this moment.
"Every opportunity to play for India is a big one, to be able to ton up on my birthday is a stuff of dreams," Kohli said after scoring his century. "Grateful to God that I've blessed with such moments. It's a target well above par for me as the ball was gripping and it wasn't easy to get hold of the bowlers. We have a quality attack. Wicket will get slower, pressure will mount, so hopefully we start well with the new ball."
Meanwhile, Kohli remained unbeaten on 101 runs off 121 balls with the help of 10 fours to help India score 326 runs for five while batting first. Shreyas Iyer also smashed crucial 77 runs and Ravindra Jadeja contributed with a quick cameo.
