Former India captain Virat Kohli is expected to score a 49th ODI century to equal Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar‘s record of most centuries in the format every time he walks out to bat. While Kohli is yet to become only the second batter in the history of the sport to be one short of 50 ODI hundreds, he has managed to join Tendulkar in an entirely different record book.
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Kohli, who got out for a duck in the ongoing ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 Match 29 against England in Lucknow, now has the same number of ducks as Tendulkar in all the three formats of international cricket. Other than Tendulkar and Kohli, former Zimbabwean and Pakistani cricketers named Grant Flower and Mohammad Hafeez respectively also have 34 ducks under their belt.
Speaking particularly of Indian cricketers, bowling greats such as Zaheer Khan (44), Ishant Sharma (40), Harbhajan Singh (37) and Anil Kumble (35) have been out without scoring a single run at the highest level more times than Tendulkar and Kohli.
It is worth noting that Kohli’s 16th ODI duck boils down to his own mistake. Wanting to press the issue against England all-rounder David Willey, Kohli stepped out to hit the left-arm bowler over mid-off. However, all he did was mis-time the ball to England all-rounder Ben Stokes at mid-off.
Perhaps inspired by captain Rohit Sharma‘s free-flowing form, Kohli’s unnecessary and unnatural attempt to attack cost him his wicket today. Having registered a nine-ball duck, it was for the first time when the 34-year old player played more than five balls without scoring a run in an ODI innings.
All in all, it was Kohli’s 19th duck in the Asian subcontinent and at No. 3, 18th as a specialist batter, 17th at home, 11th against England and first this year for India.
Virat Kohli Registers First Duck In World Cups
Three years after first representing India, Kohli’s maiden World Cup appearance had come in the 2011 World Cup at home. Having kick-started his World Cup career with a fifth ODI century against Bangladesh, Kohli registered his first-ever World Cup duck 12 years down the line.
While Kohli had not batted twice during a shambolic ICC T20 World Cup 2021 campaign, he managed to contribute a minimum of a run 56 times (31 in ODIs) in a row across a combined of nine white-ball World Cups.
Tendulkar, on the other hand, was dismissed without scoring a run twice in ODI World Cups. With no T20 World Cup participation to his name despite a glorious 24-year old career, the right-handed batter’s first World Cup had come in 1992. While his maiden duck in a World Cup match had come against Australia at The Oval in 1999, the second one was against Sri Lanka at the Queen’s Park Oval eight years later.
