Team India’s star batter Virat Kohli ended a long wait for an international century on Thursday when he smashed an unbeaten 122 off just 61 deliveries in the Asia Cup 2022 match against Afghanistan. This was Kohli’s maiden T20I century, and a 71st international ton as he equalled Australia’s batting great Ricky Ponting for the feat. The former Indian captain also broke Rohit Sharma’s record to register the highest individual score by an Indian in a T20I innings.
Kohli’s knock sent the fans into frenzy, as the Indian batter’s last century in international cricket came way back in November 2019 during a Test against Bangladesh. The cricket fraternity also sent its wishes to Kohli as he breached the three-figure mark and on Friday, Indian Premier League franchise Chennai Super Kings put out a four-tweet thread that won over the fans.
CSK wrote, “The King is back, they’re saying. But he never left, did he?” as the franchise shared a picture of Kohli celebrating a Test century.
The second tweet read, “He charged head-first into battles, over and over again!” while in the third, CSK lauded Kohli’s grit. “He braved wars and scars fearlessly, turning away not once!” they wrote.
In their final tweet, CSK quoted Kohli’s ‘abhi cricket hai baaki’ comment, which he told Bhuvneshwar Kumar after returning to the dugout following a century against Afghanistan.
Earlier, Kohli had opened up on his innings during a chat with captain Rohit Sharma for bcci.tv, where he stated that he was relying on his cricketing shots and not going for the explosive hits.
“I banked on good cricketing shots and six hitting is not a big strength of mine. I can (hit sixes) if situation demands but I am better at finding gaps and as long as I can hit many boundaries, it will still serve the purpose,” Kohli said.
In fact, he had told Dravid and batting coach Vikram Rathour about his process.
“I told coaches that I will find the gaps rather than trying to hit big. It is not always that in T20 cricket, to get the strike-rate up, you need to only hit sixes. I got that out of my system and I am back with my template,” the master batter had said.
