Virat Kohli breaks Sourav Ganguly’s ton record in 3rd ODI vs South Africa

Indian cricket team skipper Virat Kohli smashed a number of records en route a match-winning 160 against South Africa cricket team in Cape Town, including Sourav Ganguly’s most tons by an Indian captain.

There was no stopping Indian cricket team captain Virat Kohli as he slammed his 34th ODI hundred to guide the visitors to a whopping 124-run win over South Africa in Cape Town on Wednesday. With this victory, India took an unassailable 3-0 lead in the six-match ODI series. (SA vs IND 3rd ODI Highlights)

Indian cricket team skipper Virat Kohli celebrates his century in the third ODI against South Africa cricket team at Newlands Stadium in Cape Town on Wednesday.(REUTERS)

Kohli’s sublime hundred, which was his second in the series, was special in many ways as he broke a number of records during his unbeaten 160 off 159 balls. (SA vs IND 3rd ODI Scorecard)

Going past Ganguly

This was Virat Kohli’s 12th century as skipper, a feat that took him past Sourav Ganguly’s record tally of 11 hundreds as Indian captain. Kohli achieved the milestone in his 43rd innings as captain. In comparison, it took Ganguly 142 innings to reach the same. Now, only Ricky Ponting (22 centuries in 220 innings) and AB de Villiers (13 hundreds in 98 innings) have more hundreds than Kohli as captain in ODIs.

Kohli also broke another record by Ganguly -- that of the highest individual score by an Indian batsman against the Proteas in South Africa. He surpassed Ganguly’s 127 against South Africa scored at Johannesburg in 2001. Kohli also became the first Indian batsman to hit a hundred against the home team at Newlands. Incidentally, among Indian batsmen, only Ganguly had scored a hundred on this ground earlier. But, his hundred came against Kenya in March 2003.

A running innings

Another standout feature of Kohli’s innings was that he accumulated 100 out of 160 by running and only 60 by boundaries. He stole 75 singles, 11 doubles and one triple and earned himself a distinction of becoming the first Indian batsman to score 100 runs by running in an ODI.

The record for scoring the highest number of runs by running between the wickets is held by former South African opener Gary Kirsten, who ran 112 out of his 188 runs in a match against the UAE in the 1996 ICC World Cup.

Slow and impactful

In terms of the number of balls faced, this was the Indian skipper’s joint slowest hundred in ODIs. His ton came off 119 balls. He faced the same number of balls while scoring a hundred against Pakistan in the 2015 ICC World Cup game in Adelaide. His innings was also the longest in terms of ball faced by a non-opening Indian batsman in ODIs.

Kohli’s series tally of runs has gone to 318 in only three innings, which is a record too. No other visiting batsmen have scored so many runs in a bilateral series against South Africa in South Africa. The previous best was Ricky Ponting’s tally of 283 runs in 2001-02.

This was also Kohli’s second highest score in the ODIs behind his epic 183 that he slammed against Pakistan in an Asia Cup match in 2012.