Indian legend Sunil Gavaskar is hopeful that former Indian skipper Virat Kohli celebrates his 100th Test match with a century. Kohli will play the landmark Test of his career against Sri Lanka in Mohali but the match will be played behind closed doors.
In fact, Kohli had scored his last Test century back in 2019 in the pink-ball Test match against Bangladesh at Kolkata, which was also his last International hundred in any format.
Since then the wait for the 71st International century is been going on. Meanwhile, Kohli has been in good form in the limited-overs format but his average in the last two years in Test format has been around 28, which is disappointing.
Kohli has had a glorious career so far in all three formats and he has been a consistent performer in all kinds of conditions. The talisman has scored 7962 runs in 99 Test matches at an average of 50.39 and thus he is only 38 runs from reaching the milestone of 8000 Test runs.
Sunil Gavaskar said on Star Sports, “Well, I can only say that it is going to be a sense of achievement. When you start playing cricket as a school kid, you want to play for India and hoping that you play for India for a certain while and suddenly you know, success comes to you and then you go on from year to year and then the 100th Test comes to you.”
“It’s a very special feeling. And look at what he has achieved in all formats of the game, not just Test cricket, where he has been fabulous.”
Meanwhile, a handful of batters have scored a hundred in their 100th Test match. Players like Colin Cowdrey, Alex Stewart, Ricky Ponting (he scored a century in both innings of his 100th Test), Inzamam-ul-Haq, Joe Root, Graeme Smith, Hashim Amla, Javed Miandad and Gordan Greenidge have scored a century in their 100th Test match. Thus, no Indian has ever achieved the feat.
“And I hope he celebrates his 100th Test with a 100. Not many batsmen has done that. I know Colin Cowdrey, who was probably the first to play 100 Test matches, scored a hundred in his 100th Test. I know Javed Miandad has done it. Alex Stewart has down it.”
The first Test match between India and Sri Lanka will be played from the 4th of March in Mohali.
