Stats: Hashim Amla overtakes Virat Kohli to become the fastest to 15 ODI centuries

Hashim Amla

Virat Kohli’s record of having scored 15 One-day International centuries in the least number of innings – 106 – has been broken by South African’s Hashim Amla today, who scored his 15th ODI ton in only his 86th innings, against Zimbabwe at Bulawayo.

Kohli currently has 19 ODI centuries and 30 half-centuries in 134 matches. Amla has shown some incredible consistency after his second-coming to the international arena and is among the best ODI batsmen in the world today. Although the 31-year-old’s strike rate is close to 90, perhaps, the ability of AB de Villiers, Kohli and MS Dhoni to accelerate the game at will and take the attack to the opposition could arguably keep them ahead of him. The counter argument to which would be that Amla could be best bet among the lot to tackle challenging conditions, be it pace or swing.

Zimbabwe recover but still face daunting task

Put into bat first in the first of the 3-match bilateral one-day series, the South African openers Quinton de Kock and Amla got the team off to a fine start by putting together a 109-run partnership in 123 balls. After Kock’s dismissal for 63 runs to his name, Amla made sure that the visitors went on to set up an imposing total of 309/3 by remaining unbeaten on 122, which came off 132 deliveries, with the likes of Faf du Plessis, AB de Villiers and JP Duminy chipping in with valuable contributions.

In reply, at the time of writing this article, Zimbabwe were 131/3 in 27.3 overs with Hamilton Masakadza (60* off 73) and Sean Williams (42* off 39) trying to make a match out of it after the home side slumped to 34 for 3 in 11.1 overs.