India’s stalwart batsman Virat Kohli is on the verge of equaling several individual records in Test cricket and will get a chance to emulate them when the five-match Test series against England begins from January 25. The former Indian captain is closer to former batting legend Sunil Gavaskar’s record of most runs against England in domestic Tests.
Sunil Gavaskar is currently India’s leading run-scorer at home against England in red-ball matches. The 74-year-old scored 1331 runs at an average of almost 36 against the Three Lions before his retirement and to this day, no one has been able to knock him off the top.
But as we all know, no record is safe when Virat Kohli is at his best. Last year, during the ICC Cricket World Cup in India, the 35-year-old first emulated and then broke Sachin Tendulkar’s record of 49 ODI centuries.
In all, Kohli scored 3 centuries in the CWC and hit his 49th ton against South Africa in Kolkata before hitting his 50th ODI ton against New Zealand in the semi-final at Wankhede, also in front of his idol and the previous centurion record holder. more ODIs.
Almost 2 months later, Virat Kohli now has a chance to surpass another great batsman in Gavaskar. The former is currently the third highest scorer against England in India (1015 runs) and will become the second highest by scoring 8 runs in the first Test to surpass Gundappa Viswanath who has 1022 runs.
To surpass Gavaskar, Virat Kohli needs 317 runs and he will have plenty of chances to do so in the 5 Tests in Hyderabad, Vishakhapatnam, Saurashtra, Jharkhand and Dharamshala. Thats not all. If he manages to score 152 runs, Kohli will become the 18th batsman to complete 9,000 Test runs and is a century away from becoming the 15th batsman to hit 30 hundreds in red-ball cricket.
Overall, Virat Kohli has 1991 runs against England in Tests since 2012 at a decent average of 42.36, including 5 centuries and 9 half-centuries in 28 innings. On English soil, Kohli has scored 1096 runs with a maximum of 149 in 17 matches.
Virat Kohli can harness record-breaking motivation to have another memorable Test series against England
Needless to say, Virat Kohli always turns up for his team when it matters most, in the toughest situations, home or away, and that makes him a great player. So this time he too expected nothing less than that.
The 35-year-old, who loves to prove himself against tough opposition, can use the opportunity to break the aforementioned records as motivation to produce another masterclass of a Test series. Those records can act as fuel for the fire that he will try to ignite from the first Test at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium.
Although the former world No. 1 Test batsman is yet to bag an ICC trophy as a senior player, there is absolutely no doubt about his class and time will tell if he can break the records we discuss in this article.