Virat 100 matches without a century
New Delhi: Former India and Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Virat Kohli is going through a terrible run of form for some time now and his string of failures with the bat continued with a first-ball duck on Tuesday in the IPL 2022 match against Lucknow Super Giants at the D.Y Patil Stadium here.
With that disappointing outing in the middle, Kohli set a dubious record, going 100 competitive games without a century. Kohli has now gone 17 Tests, 21 ODIs, 25 T20Is, and 37 IPL matches without reaching the three-figure mark, according to a tweet put out by cricket statistician Mahzer Arshad.
On Tuesday, Kohli came in to bat after RCB had lost the opener, Anuj Rawat, for 4 in the first over. Kohli went for a first-ball duck in the last delivery of the first over. It was a back-of-length ball outside off and the 33-year-old Delhi batter just pushed it for a simple catch to the fielder at point.
In seven matches in IPL 2022 so far, Kohli has managed only 119 runs at an average of 19.83 with the highest score of 48.
Kolhi is the top-scorer in IPL history so far with 6402 in 214 matches with five centuries and 42 fifties. He is seventh on the list of batters with more runs (combined, Test, ODI, T20I) in cricket history with 23,650 runs. Sachin Tendulkar leads the list with 34,357 combined runs across all formats.
But he is going through poor form for some time. He relinquished the Test captaincy recently and has been replaced by Rohit Sharma as captain across all formats. Virat’s lean form is a cause of concern for India, especially in a T20 World Cup year. The ‘Men in Blue’ can’t afford to have a struggling Kohli in Australia later this year.
His latest failure on Tuesday received a lot of attention on social media with many netizens arguing in favour and some against him, talking of the difficulty of scoring centuries in T20 cricket, including IPL. Kohli incidentally is second on the list of players with most centuries in IPL with five tons, trailing Chris Gayle (6).