India’s star batter Virat Kohli is currently playing in the third Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia at Gabba, Brisbane. As he stepped in to take the field, he equaled the record of the great Sachin Tendulkar.
Not only this record, Kohli has another record in his sights. The 36-year-old can achieve this milestone if he can score a hundred in the ongoing Test at Brisbane. He has a chance to become the second Indian batter to achieve this feat after Sunil Gavaskar.
Watch: Mohammed Siraj targeted by Gabba crowd over fiery send-off to Travis Head
Virat Kohli equals the record of Sachin Tendulkar
On December 14 (Saturday), Virat Kohli played his 100th game against Australia when he took the field in Brisbane. He became the second player after Sachin Tendulkar to play 100 international matches against Australia across all the formats.
Tendulkar has played a total of 110 international matches against Australia while Kohli is just 10 matches below him in the list. Sachin scored 6707 runs at an impressive average of 49.68 with 20 hundreds and 31 fifties to his name. These no. of runs are the highest by any player against any team in the world.
Meanwhile, Kohli too has scored over 5000 runs against Australia across formats. Recently, he scored his latest hundred against Australia in the first Test at Perth when he finished unbeaten on 100 off 143 balls.
Players with the most international hundreds against Australia
Sachin Tendulkar (India)- 110 matches
Virat Kohli (India)- 100 matches
Desmond Haynes (West Indies)- 97 matches
MS Dhoni (India)- 91 matches
Sir Viv Richards (West Indies)- 88 matches
Virat Kohli eyeing Sunil Gavaskar’s record at Gabba
Meanwhile, Virat Kohli will be eyeing another record in Brisbane. If he scores a hundred in this Test match, he will become only the second Indian to score five Test hundreds in all five big Australian grounds – Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide.
Sunil Gavaskar was the first Indian to reach this milestone. Apart from Gavaskar, Alastair Cook is the only other batter to achieve this feat. If Kohli scores a century at Gabba, he will become the third batter overall to reach the milestone.
Virat Kohli hasn’t been in great form of late despite a brilliant hundred in Perth recently. He had a poor home Test season against Bangladesh and New Zealand where he had just one fifty to his name across five Tests.
He registered scores of 7 and 11 across the two innings in Adelaide and had no answers to the moving pink ball under lights. He will be aiming to regain some form as India expects big runs from their talismanic batter.
India’s Playing XI for third Test against Australia in Brisbane
India made two changes to their Playing XI from the second Test in Adelaide. Allrounder Ravindra Jadeja and Akash Deep were back in the team replacing Ravichandran Ashwin and Harshit Rana.
XI: Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant(w), Rohit Sharma(c), Ravindra Jadeja, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep