India captain Virat Kohli on Sunday became the second fastest player to scorer 25 Test centuries during the second Test match against Australia at Perth.
He achieved the feat in 127 innings, behind legendary Donald Bradman's 68 innings. The 123-run innings was his sixth Test hundred on Australian soil, joining boyhood hero Sachin Tendulkar.
Already hailed one of the greats of the game, Kohli is unrivalled when it comes to scoring runs in contemporary cricket. And of course, there's the comparison with the legends.
Former England skipper Michael Vaughan believes Kohli is a better batsman across three formats than legends such as Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara and Ricky Ponting.
"I have not seen a better player. I'm not disrespecting Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara or Ricky Ponting but across three formats of the game I have not seen anyone better," Vaughan wrote about Kohli in his column for Foxsports.
"He has such high skill levels and an incredible mentality when it comes to dealing with the pressure of the chase. All that while dealing with a weight of expectation and adulation that only Sachin would have experienced."
And probably Vaughan has the numbers to prove it.
Here are some facts:
- Kohli is the fastest batsman to score 10000 ODI runs, in just 205 innings. Tendulkar took 259 innings.
- Kohli is the fastest captain to reach 8000 international runs. He took just 137 innings to reach the landmark.
- Kohli is the fastest to score 1000 ODI runs in a calendar year, beating Hashim Amla's record in 2010.
- Kohli is the first captain to score 1000+ Test runs in three consecutive years.
- Kohli is the fastest to 4,000 runs as captain in Tests. He took 65 innings, beating Lara (71).
- Kohli is the first captain to make 200 runs in a Test match for the tenth time. Lara and Ponting have seven each.
- Kohli is the quickest captain to score 7000 international runs (in just 124 innings). Previous quickest was Lara (164).
- Kohli has scored over 300 runs in a bilateral ODI series on six different occasions. No one has done it more than four times.
- Kohli is the first to score 4 double-centuries in 4 consecutive Test series – the longest such sequence going past Rahul Dravid and Don Bradman (three each).
- Virat has the most number of centuries (18 in 102 innings) while chasing in ODIs, breaking Tendulkar's record of 17 in 232 innings.
- He is the only player to score three tons in his first three Test innings as captain.
Australian great Allan Border also lauded Kohli, saying the Indian skipper could surpass the likes Lara, Ponting and Tendulkar in the record books.
The 30-year-old Kohli has already scored 62 international centuries.
"I think by the time Kohli finishes he (could) statistically be equal or better than all those players," Border said.
