Kohli, a man from a different planet

Scoring a hundred is considered a match winning effort in cricket but to score 100 international hundreds was something completely unheard of. It needed a champion batsman Master Blaster to conquer a peak higher than the Everest in cricketing terms. When Sachin retired, the world was at its feet to salute the champion and probably one of the greatest cricketer.

Everyone conceived the fact that a batsman with a stature bigger than Sachin would not be produced and his records would remain untouched. But who would have thought his successor had debuted even before he retired. Scoring hundreds isn't easy; it was true until Kohli decided to change it. Virat Kohli is on his merry way to scoring centuries for fun. It has been a walk in the park kind of stuff for him in the past 3 years. The kind of form he is in, you can wake him up in the middle of a night and ask him to bat, and he will still manage to get a century.

As soon as he walks out to bat, fans anticipate a century. Such are the expectations from him. And rarely does he disappoint. In the last 3 years, from the start of 2016, Virat Kohli has scored more international runs than anyone in the time frame. He has been the highest run getter in internationals in 2016 as well as 2017 and is leading the pack in 2018 also. The run machine also has more international centuries than anyone in the past 3 years. In fact his tally of 28 (with 3 Test matches against Aussies remaining) in international cricket in 3 consecutive calendar years is more than anyone in the history of the game.

For many, it could be Kohli's "purple patch" but one who has followed Indian cricket or Kohli's career closely might know that King Kohli never really had a lean period, except probably the much talked about England series in 2014. In terms of ODIs, 2015 is considered a dry year for the champion batsman. But if we focus the lens deeper, in the so called 'dry year', the Delhi lad scored at an average of 36, which is around the career average of many good batsmen. So phenomenal have his performances been in the past that an average of 36 is rated a lean patch in regards to his standard. The current purple patch of the modern master is just better than his previous ones to say the least.

Kohli at present has 38 ODI centuries and 24 in Tests which takes his tally to 62. He along with Kallis are four on the list of most international tons lead by the Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar. Sangakkara (63) and Ponting (71) are second and third, respectively.

Another credit in Kohli's favour is that he has got there in double quick time. He has played almost half the number of innings as Sachin played and to put weight on it, Kohli has also played 58 T-20 innings, where scoring a century is not that easy. He is fastest to 62 international centuries.

In the set of active players, he is the undisputed king. In the much talked about fab four, Smith, Williamson and Root have 31, 29 and 27 tons, respectively. David Warner has 35 centuries to his name. Hashim Amla is the nearest to Kohli with 54 international tons, but he is well over 35 and doesn't have age in his hand. Thus, without a shadow of doubt, Kohli will go down as the greatest batsman of the era not just in terms of the runs he scores but also the amount of impact he has on the team.

Only 12 out of his 62 centuries have resulted in a loss which shows his importance to the side and the amount of impact his performance has on the chances of the team.

If you compare him with all the batsmen who have more than 20 international tons, his average of 56.56 is just behind Sir Gary Sobers (57.37) and unmatchable Don Bradman's 99.94, which stamps his authority as one of the greatest to have ever played the game. Also, his art of scoring hundreds is unreal. In 390 innings, he has 62 hundreds which means he scores a century every 6.29 innings. If you leave the Don out of the equation, only Gary Sobers is marginally ahead of him with a century every 6.19 innings, which again shows the class of the man.

Of all the active players, Steve Smith and Hashim Amla are the next best but are at a distance away from King Kohli with a hundred in every 7.61 and 7.68 innings, respectively. If we leave out T-20 matches, Kohli's rate comes to a whopping 5.35, which indicates that he scores a ton in almost every 5 matches in ODIs and one in a 3-match Test series.

Kohli will just be 30 and certainly has many years of cricket left in him. The way he has been scoring runs and centuries, it will not be a surprise if he gets pretty close to many of Sachin's record, especially in the ODI format. The record which will be broken the earliest is Sachin's tally of 49 ODI centuries. Kohli has 38 to his name and it seems a matter of just around 3 years as one can assume atleast a century in each series. It's just one of the many records which would be broken.

At the end of his career, he would reach very close to Sachin's tally of 100 tons and who knows the Everest of 100 international hundreds would be conquered once again, this time by the modern day great Virat Kohli.