Former England batter Kevin Pietersen believes that it will boil down to just one thing if former India captain Virat Kohli is to break legendary Sachin Tendulkar’s record of scoring 100 international centuries. If truth be told, Kohli is the only active cricketer at the moment to even stand a chance of challenging the Master Blaster’s record.
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Having scored 75 centuries in 498 matches for India across a 15-year-long career, Kohli is still short of 25 hundreds to equal Tendulkar’s feat. For the sake of context, Tendulkar had hit 100 centuries in 664 matches in a career that spanned over 24 years. The longevity of Tendulkar’s international career gave him an edge.
There was a phase where Kohli was going really strong but not scoring a single century across 44 international matches in 2020 and 2021 was a setback for him. Even in 2022, he managed to score just a couple of hundreds. Having said that, Kohli has shown a lot of promise on the back of scoring five centuries in the last 12 months. Extending such a dream run will hand him a real chance of becoming only the second batter to score 100 (or more) hundreds at the highest level.
When Kevin Pietersen Answered If Virat Kohli Will Be Able To Break Sachin Tendulkar’s Record Or Not
In an interview with Times Now in 2020, Pietersen had highlighted how the demands of modern-day cricket, especially because of scheduling, makes it a tougher task for contemporary players to achieve such records.
He said that all these things will take a toll on Kohli who represents India in all the three formats and also plays for Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League. It is noteworthy that Tendulkar played a lone T20I and even the IPL was introduced during the fag end of his career. Although Kohli would want to not give up on any format, doing the same could instead aid him in increasing the length of his international career.
Pietersen, who is also a good friend of Kohli, compared the personalities of both these great batters. He believed that Tendulkar wasn’t that emotional and used to stay calm, but it’s the exact opposite with Kohli.
“It depends on how long Virat Kohli continues to play. Remember, Kohli plays all three forms of the game, plus he plays the IPL. For the majority of Sachin Tendulkar’s career, there was no T20 cricket and there was no IPL. So it all depends on how long Kohli plays for.”
Comparing Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli’s Numbers
Kohli has currently scored 25,385 runs in 498 international matches at an astonishing average of 53.44. Talking about Tendulkar, he had scored 34,357 runs across 664 matches at an average of 48.52.
Interestingly, Tendulkar had also scored 75 international centuries after 498 matches. It is clear that Kohli is on the right path, and if he can continue playing for more years, he might as well equal or even outdo Tendulkar.
