Virat Kohli scores 20th Test century, racks up staggering numbers in 2017

Virat Kohli continued his century scoring spree with his third hundred in as many innings. The Indian captain scored another hundred in the ongoing Test series against Sri Lanka at the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in New Delhi on Saturday. He had scored centuries in the first Test at Eden Gardens and then in Nagpur, which was a double century.
Playing at his home ground, Kohli was in complete control of his innings and did not give any chance to Sri Lanka bowlers. Kohli dominated proceedings and reached the three-figure mark in just 110 balls, making this knock his fastest Test hundred. He hit 14 fours in his innings. This was his 13th century as captain for India and the first at this venue.

During his 20th Test century, Kohli also scored 5000 Test runs, only the 10th Indian batsman to achieve that feat. He is the fourth fastest to reach the landmark after Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag and Sourav Ganguly.
Kohli has been been in brilliant form this year and this was his fourth century against Sri Lanka in 2017. He had scored a century against Sri Lanka at Galle earlier this year. The other three centuries came in this series. For Kohli, this year is ending on a high in Tests. It started with a double hundred against Bangladesh before runs dried up. The skipper then hit a hundred at Galle before reserving the best for the last series of the calendar year. India will now travel to South Africa for a long tour in January.

Kohli has played 15 Test innings this year and accumulated 866* runs. Even in this series, Kohli is the leading run-scorer with more than 450 runs. His double century against Sri Lanka in Nagpur was his fifth for India and fifth as India captain. No other Indian captain has more double centuries.

After electing to bat in the final Test, India lost opener Shikhar Dhawan and Cheteshwar Pujara early but the hosts recovered well with Murali Vijay-Kohli stand. Both hit individual hundreds to put the innings back on track and operated at a very healthy strike-rate. Kohli in particular didn’t eat up many deliveries and his strike-rate remained in the higher 80s. The Kotla ton was Vijay’s second of the series and his 11th in Tests. Before playing the Nagpur Test, where he scored a hundred, Vijay had hit a hundred for Tamil Nadu in the Ranji Trophy contest against Odisha.