Watch: Virat Kohli dances at the crease before hitting flurry of boundaries to reach historic hundred vs Afghanistan

A confident Virat Kohli was spotted dancing to the DJ's tune while at the crease en route to his sensational and record maiden century in T20I cricket.

The first reaction that former India captain Virat Kohli had when he reached his much-eluded 71st century on Thursday in Dubai during the Asia Cup 2022 match against Afghanistan was "shocked". Yet through the entire second part of his innings Kohli looked more confident with the bat than he has ever looked in the past few months. So confident that Kohli was spotted dancing to the DJ's tune while at the crease en route to his sensational and record maiden century in T20I cricket.

Virat Kohli

1021 days - that's how long fans and even his teammates have waited for Kohli to reach his next international hundred. For a batter, who redefined the standards of modern-era batting with his ability to score centuries and break records at will, to have struggled to reach a century in over 80 innings across formats was the cynosure of world cricket. But as experts said on Thursday, Kohli had finally "got the monkey off his back" with a ton that came the format he himself least expected. It wasn't just his 71st ton that put him alongside Aussie great Ricky Ponting in the historic list, but was his first in T20I format, making him among the few India batters to have notched up the three-figure mark in all three formats.

During his innings, in the 17th over, after he smashed Afghanistan bowler Fareed Ahmad for a boundary in the penultimate ball of the over, the camera caught Kohli dancing at the crease to the DJ's tune, enjoying that moment in his life, which also perfectly summed up his knock. In the very next ball, Kohli once again smashed a boundary with a little shimmy down the track to flick the fuller one from middle and leg through square leg.

It took Kohli three more boundaries and a six in the next two overs to reach his 71st international ton, which came after a gap of 84 innings and helped India reach a 200-plus total for the first time in Asia Cup 2022.

"Very blessed, very grateful right now. The last two and half years has taught me a lot, I am going to turn 34 in November, so the celebrations are for the past. I have put a lot of things into perspective. I was a bit shocked as this was the format I least expected for a century to come anytime soon. It is all God's blessing, I have been working hard and this was just a moment which was very special for me and the team as well. It was an accumulation of a lot of things (on what was going on his mind when he reached the hundred). As I said, since I came back into the team, the team has been open, welcoming, helpful and given me space to work on my game," he said on his century.