India vs Sri Lanka | Virat Kohli equals Brian Lara’s record of five double-hundreds as captain

India vs Sri Lanka | Virat Kohli equals Brian Lara’s record of five double-hundreds as captain

no photo

|

BCCI

Virat Kohli has been in the exceptional form throughout this year and he looks to end it that way against Sri Lanka as he brought up his fifth Test double-century on Sunday that helped India to declare the first innings at 610/6. Apart from Kohli, three other Indian players also scored centuries.

After showing some fighting spirit in the first Test of the series, in Kolkata, that ended as a draw, Sri Lanka seem to have gone on the backfoot in the second Test in Nagpur. After the visitors were wrapped up for meek 205 runs in the first innings, India piled on a massive 610 runs at the loss of six wickets before they decided to declare. The high-scoring innings saw India creating and break many records.

Virat Kohli brought up his fifth double-hundred for India in the 213-run knock, which now brings him level with West Indies' Brian Lara and ahead of the likes of Sir Don Bradman, Michael Clarke, and Graeme Smith, who had four each. The game saw Kohli's 19th Test century as well and his fourth against Sri Lanka, which takes his Test batting figures to 4762 runs in 61 Tests.

As a captain, Kohli has a 75% conversion rate of fifties to centuries in Tests, which is the best among all captains with 10 or more hundreds. The Indian skipper now has ten centuries in all international cricket format in 2017, which is a record for any captain in a calendar year as he leapfrogged Ricky Ponting (2005 and 2006) and Smith (2005) had nine each.

The pair of Cheteshwar Pujara and Murali Vijay joined the elite group of Loxton-Harvey, Manjrekar-Azharuddin, Butcher-Trescothick and Younis-Yousuf, who have four successive century stands in Tests.

This is also the third time that an Indian innings saw four centuries as Vijay, Pujara, Kohli, and Rohit Sharma, all contributed to the grand total. Before this game, India had achieved this feat against South Africa in Kolkata back in 2010 and against Bangladesh in Mirpur in 2007.

Get updates! Follow us on

Open all