The crowd at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad went wild when Virat Kohli played a delivery from Nathan Lyon on the leg side and took a single before he got halfway over the other end.
Virat Kohli’s Test century was discussed on social media as people started to craft messages, which eventually appeared on the timeline. Many were astonished by Kohli’s celebration; he softly removed his helmet, kissed his engagement ring that was hanging from a locket, and hoisted his bat. He eventually had the chance to enjoy the achievement after 1205 days, 24 Tests, and 42 innings in the most difficult format of the game.
It becomes nearly impossible to watch when a player like Virat Kohli goes longer than three years without scoring a century in Test cricket, his average falls below 50, and he has only scored six half-centuries in 24 Tests since December 2019. A ‘600kg gorilla is off his back today’, observed former Indian head coach Ravi Shastri as Kohli got the century on Day 4 of the fourth Test against Australia.
India overcame Australia’s first innings total of 480 and took the lead to put pressure back on them thanks to Kohli’s magnificent 186-run effort. India’s head coach Rahul Dravid questioned his players after the fourth Test finished in a tie and India won the Border-Gavaskar Trophy by a score of 2-1 for the fourth time in a row.
“I know you are someone who takes a lot of pride in his performance and has that habit of scoring 100 regularly. I know there was COVID, so, not a lot of Test matches but has it been hard not to have scored a Test hundred (for this long)? I know we get a little obsessed with numbers. I’ve loved seeing some of the other innings. Even the 70 in Cape Town was a really good inning. But has (not scoring a hundred) been at the back of your mind?” Dravid asked Kohli on BCCI.tv.
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Kohli acknowledged of being bothered by the feeling of not scoring a ton for all this while and also admitted that scoring 40-45 never satiate his hunger. “Honestly, I’ve let the complications grow on me a bit because of my shortcomings. The desperation to get to the three-figure mark is something that can grow on you as a batsman. I let that happen to me to a certain extent. But a flip side to it is, I’m not a guy who is happy with 40-45. I take a lot of pride in performing for the team. It’s not like when Virat Kohli should stand out.
When I’m batting on 40, I know I can get a 150. That was eating me up a lot. Why am I not able to get that big score for the team? Because I took pride in the fact that when the team needed me, I stood up, scoring in difficult conditions. The fact that I wasn’t able to do that, was bothering me,” Virat replied. Kohli also opened up on how it becomes difficult as a player to deliver under pressure for an extended period of time.
“It was never about the milestones. A lot of people ask me, ‘how do you keep scoring those hundreds’. And I always say a hundred is something that happens along the way within my goal, which is to bat as long as possible for my team. But yeah, if I’m brutally honest, it does become a little difficult as the moment you step out of the hotel room, right from the guy outside, to the guy in the lift, the bus driver everyone is saying ‘we want a hundred’. So, it does play on your mind all the time but that’s also the beauty of playing for so long to have these complications come up and overcome these challenges,” Kohli added.
