Cricket News: On Thursday, not only for Virat Kohli but for every one of cricket, the protracted wait came to an end. For 1019 days and 83 innings across formats, Kohli waited for his next century, his 71st in international cricket, after his previous three-figure performance in November 2019. And it arrived in a way Kohli least anticipated. Shoaib Akhtar, a cricketing icon from Pakistan who had pushed Virat Kohli to end his century drought, praised Kohli’s remarkable comeback before warning him sternly and pushing him to match Sachin Tendulkar’s greatest-ever achievement in international cricket.
Kohli once appeared to be destined to surpass Sachin’s elusive total of 100 hundred across all formats. In addition to shattering each of Sachin’s prior records, Kohli was racking up hundreds at will. That was all before he went through an unexpected period in his career, which cast doubt on his ability to recover and subsequently come close to matching Sachin’s feat with each passing day.
But now that Kohli has the monkey off his back, the goal has been reset, and Akhtar acknowledged on his YouTube channel that the following 29 hundred will be the hardest and determine his level of brilliance.
“Virat Kohli, you have always spoken the truth and good things will happen with you. Remember that yeh tees centuries aapko nichod ke chodengi (these 30-odd centuries will be difficult to come). But don’t lose courage because you will end up being the greatest of all time. So keep pushing yourself,” he said.
“I have always maintained that Virat Kohli is the greatest batter of all time. But the next 29 hundred will be a tough road for him because he took about 900 days to get from 70th to 71st ton.”
As India looks to finish off their preparation for the T20 World Cup, Kohli is most likely to play in the limited-overs series against Australia and South Africa at home.
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