Published 11:52 IST, October 11th 2019
Virat Kohli becomes first Indian captain to hit 40 international tons
Indian captain Virat Kohli smashed the 26th ton of his Test career in the second test against SA and became the first Indian to score 40 hundreds as captain.
- SportFit
- 3 min read
Indian captain Virat Kohli smashed the 26th century of his Test career and became the first Indian to score 40 hundreds as captain. He is now second in the list of players who have slammed most number of tons as captain. The list is topped former Australian captain Ricky Ponting who has the most international hundreds as a captain. Ponting had 41 centuries as the captain for Australia in international cricket.
Kohli achieved the milestone on the second day of the second Test match against South Africa at the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) Stadium in Pune. He brought up his ton in the 109th over of the Indian innings when he hit an on-drive off a Philander half volley which raced away to the boundary. The Indian skipper now has scored 26 centuries in 81 matches. In the process, he went past former Indian cricketer Dilip Vengasarkar who had a tally of 6,868 Test runs. He is now at the seventh spot in the list which is topped by the legendary Sachin Tendulkar and is at the 53rd position in the all-time list of leading run-scorers in Test cricket.
On Thursday, Kohli became the second Indian captain to lead India in 50 Test matches after he went past Saurav Ganguly's tally of 49 test matches as skipper. Former skipper MS Dhoni heads the list with 60 tests matches as the skipper.
Kohli became India's most successful Test captain
In August, Kohli surpassed Dhoni to become the most successful Indian Test captain. The 30-year-old Kohli had 27 wins to his name before the second Test match against West Indies, but with the win, Kohli took his tally to 28 wins in the longest format of the game. He now has 29 wins from 49 matches as Test skipper. Dhoni had won 27 out of 60 matches he captained.
He also went past former Indian captain Ganguly in terms of most number of wins on foreign soil when Team India won the first Test against West Indies by 318 runs. This was Kohli's 12th win overseas from 26 matches. Ganguly had won 11 tests from 28 matches that he captained.
Updated 15:04 IST, October 11th 2019