As Virat Kohli broke the 10000 runs barrier recently in ODIs, he broke Sachin’s record of being the fastest to the milestone. But there is another record made by Sachin Tendulkar which stands tall for 20 years now; the record for scoring the most international centuries in a single calendar year. Sachin scored as many as 12 international centuries in Tests and ODIs combined in 1998, the most prolific year in his career. No other batsman including the likes of Brian Lara or Ricky Ponting could break this record in their careers.
It is Virat Kohli who is within touching distance of this record now. Virat has already scored 10 centuries in 2018, with 3 T20Is and 3 Test matches still to go. While he has not scored any centuries in T20 internationals yet, he has been in enviable form in Test cricket. Virat scored 4 centuries in 4 matches on his last tour to Australia, and hence 3 more centuries in the first 3 Tests may not be an impossibility.
This is not even the first time Virat has come close to breaking this record. It was only in 2017 that Kohli scored 11 centuries, just one less than Sachin and equal to Ricky Ponting who also stands at the second with 11 centuries in 2003. The interesting fact is that Kohli is so close to the record even when he has not played all of India’s ODIs during the year, missing the Asia cup entirely.
