Virat Kohli lit up the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad against SRH in the Indian Premier League (IPL) on Thursday. He smashed a century off 62 balls to help Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) chase down 187 runs with eight wickets in hand. He stitched a record-breaking partnership of 172 runs for the first wicket with his skipper Faf du Plessis. With this win, RCB also kept their playoff hopes alive and climbed to the fourth position in the points table.
Coming back to Kohli's record, this turned out to be his sixth century in the cash-rich league. Overall, this was his 7th ton in T20 cricket having scored a ton in T20 Internationals against Afghanistan during the Asia Cup last year. Virat Kohli also became the Indian player with most centuries in T20 cricket going past KL Rahul and India captain Rohit Sharma. Both Rohit and Rahul have scored centuries in T20 cricket so far in their career.
Meanwhile, Virat Kohli now has joint fourth-most centuries in the shortest format of the game. Chris Gayle is on top of this list with a massive 22 centuries while Pakistan skipper Babar Azam is at the second place with nine tons to his name. Michael Klinger, David Warner and Aaron Finch have smashed 8 hundreds each in their T20 career. Virat Kohli levelled Brendon McCullum and Luke Wright with his 7th T20 hundred on May 18.
Understandably, he was delighted to contribute in a team's win and also lauded Faf du Plessis for the way he has been batting this season. "Quite special considering the magnitude of the game. Thought SRH got a very good score. Ball was gripping as well. We wanted a good solid start. Didn't expect to be 172/0. But that's how well Faf and me have played this season.
"Faf's been on a different level. I've had a quiet couple of games. The way I was hitting in the nets wasn't transitioning into the middle in the last 2-3 matches. Wanted to make an impact and my intent was to go after the bowlers from ball 1 - something I've done through the season. There was a dip but I wanted to pick my game up at the right time," Kohli said.
