Sri Lanka went tumbling down to a dominating batting display by India skipper Virat Kohli on Thursday, who brought up his 29th career century in the 4 ODI. India had batted second in the past three games and the low target given by the struggling hosts hardly gave Kohli any opportunity to open his arms. It was an early dismissal of Shikhar Dhawan in the second over on Thursday that saw the Indian skipper taking the field with ample time on his hands and little pressure on his shoulders.

While the 28-year-old has often dismissed his comparisons to Tendulkar as ‘embarrassing’, a nation like India that has a criminal indifference to statistics when it comes to cricket stood up and took notice of the little road remaining before their young skipper becomes a legend. Though there is still some way to go before that happens, one cannot overlook the phenomenal pace with which the Delhi boy has risen to prominence.

Kohli has made the form look permanent over the years. In the 193 games he has played, his average ticks at 55.04 with a magnificent strike rate of 91.68. He is way superior to Ponting and Tendulkar in terms of stats and the huge number of games they took to get their first 10 tons compared to Kohli, says it all.

Starting back in 1989, Tendulkar took eight years and 134 games to land his first 10 ODI centuries, while Ponting took seven years and 151 games. Kohli has taken just four years and 88 games to get it. The second 10 tons have understandably come faster. While Ponting reached 20 ODI centuries in the next 110 games, Sachin did it in an incredible 72 games. When everyone thought that was impossible to achieve, in comes Kohli, getting over 1000 runs in centuries in just 58 games.

It goes without saying that Ponting has hardly been a match for the India skipper stats wise, and Tendulkar remains the only challenge for him, if any. However, reducing the career of Tendulkar to mere numbers is disrespectful as there remain numerous intangibles that define Kohli’s dominance over him.

The first and foremost reason would be the team built around them. In almost the entire first half of his career, Tendulkar has dragged an underperforming team along, when cricket for most Indians only meant turning off the TV when Sachin got out. Kohli, whereas, has spent almost all his nine years in a team that has dominated the ODI landscape with players all capable of winning games almost single-handedly.

Tendulkar’s last and 100 century had surprisingly come after almost a year and 34 innings. After he had taken only 65 innings to score his previous ten hundreds, which is among his better conversion rates despite some partially dry years between 2003 to 2008, the last century was expected by many to be a formality and it struggled to come.

Kohli is just 20 more hundreds short of achieving it and it is now a matter of time before he does it. Given his less injury-prone nature and advanced fitness, next eight years should be more than enough to get there, as we don’t expect him to drag himself to the pitch beyond the late 30s.