Picture Credit: Twitter
Virat Kohli recently dropped another bombshell by announcing that he will be stepping down as Test captaincy but will continue to play as batman. Initially, he had only decided to quit T20I captaincy after the T20 World Cup 2021. But later he was sacked as the ODI skipper and now he has quit even as the Test captain. In Rohit Sharma's absence, it is KL Rahul who is set to lead the team in a three-match ODI series against South Africa, starting from January 19. The Hitman has been appointed the new white-ball skipper but as he is yet to recover from his hamstring injury and so Rahul is stepping in for him.
The first ODI against South Africa will be Kohli's first in seven years that he will be stepping onto the crease in India's famous blue jersey not as a captain but as a specialist batsman. Ever since Kohli quit his Test captaincy numerous assumptions are doing the rounds predicting his future as a batsman. The popular one is that Kohli 2.0 will be lethal as ever and he will be back to scoring centuries on a regular basis.
Many users on Twitter are predicting that Kohli will certainly hit centuries in the coming time but some users went on to another extent, by putting a bet over Kohli's century. Check out a couple of such tweets where they are ready to bet a few rupees if Kohli hits a century.
Although the amount was not too much to raise eyebrows, but it certainly indicates how much cricket fans in India are involved with the batsman and his old habit of hitting centuries. However, even with just a few runs in South Africa, Kohli will shatter a handful of records. For instance, if he scores 26 more runs he will surpass current Team India head coach Rahul Dravid and BCCI president Sourav Ganguly who are on 1309 runs and 1313 runs respectively, in terms of most number of runs scored by any Indian against South Africa. At present, Kohli has scored 1287 runs against South Africa, putting him at eighth highest run getters against Proteas.
He also needs 113 more runs to become only the third Indian cricket player to score more than 1000 runs in four or more countries. He will join Ganguly as they both will have scored 1000 plus ODI runs in four different countries. Sachin Tendulkar holds the record for the most with 1000 plus runs in six different countries.