Virat Kohli Breaks Ricky Ponting's Incredible Record
Team India skipper Virat Kohli, on Tuesday, came up with a stunning century to help India recover from a shaky start and post a challenging total of 250 in the second ODI against Australia. India were off to a disastrous start when Aaron Finch won the toss and invited them to bat first. Both the openers – Shikhar Dhawan (21) and Rohit Sharma (0) – departed with just 38 runs on the board. Ambati Rayudu also did not last long as India found themselves reeling at 75 for 3.
However, Kohli along with Vijay Shankar steadied the ship before Australia could inflict further damage on the hosts. Shankar, promoted in the batting order, eased the pressure off Kohli with some string of boundaries.
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Stand up and applaud. The Run Machine brings up his 40th ODI Century ??
What a player #KingKohli ?#INDvAUS pic.twitter.com/9s2ziwh6kR
— BCCI (@BCCI) March 5, 2019
The duo looked set to bat India to a position of strength before Adam Zampa broke the stand by running Shankar out. The allrounder scored 46 off 41 balls en route his 81-run stand. India then suffered two big setbacks in quick succession. Last game’s heroes Kedar Jadhav and MS Dhoni departed on successive deliveries as the hosts found themselves reeling on 171 for 6 from 156 for 3.
However, Kohli remained firm from his end and went on to score a fine century, his 40th in ODIs.
He was well supported by Ravindra Jadeja (21) as the duo added 67 runs for the seventh wicket to take the score close to the 250-run mark. The hosts then suffered another collapse towards the end, losing their last four wickets for just 12 runs to get all out for 250 from 238 for 6.
Kohli, nonetheless, managed to add yet another feather to his cap after his 116-run knock. He became only the 6th player to score 9000 runs in International cricket as captain and the fastest player to do so. The India skipper reached the milestone in just 159 innings. In fact, no player had managed to even cross the 7,000-run mark as captain in 159 innings. The second fastest in the list is former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting who took 203 innings to achieve this feat.
Here is the list showing captains fastest to 9000 international runs:
| Player | Innings |
| Virat Kohli | 159 |
| Ricky Ponting | 203 |
| Graeme Smith | 220 |
| MS Dhoni | 253 |
| Allan Border | 257 |
| Stephen Fleming | 272 |
