Virat Kohli 'King's the Man!': Legends of the game pay tribute after historic 49th ODI century

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Virat Kohli ended the prolonged wait for his record-equalling 49th century in the ODI format as he scored a 121-ball 101* during India vs South Africa match at the ICC World Cup 2023 on Sunday (November). The historic innings came at the iconic Eden Gardens in Kolkata.

Virat Kohli has now equalled the long-standing record of legendary Sachin Tendulkar, who also took to X, formerly Twitter, to wish that the 34-year-old batter scores his 50th century during the ICC World Cup 2023 itself. Other legends also took to Twitter to praise Virat Kohli.

His innings was mostly constructed over singles and twos as Virat Kohli slammed just 10 boundaries (40 runs) during his knock, which came after India lost Rohit Sharma (40) and Shubman Gill (24) in quick succession. Shreyas Iyer had a crucial partnerhsip of 134 runs for the third wicket with the former Indian captain.

While Kohli wasn't looking comfortable against the South African spin duo of Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi and dealt with them in twos and singles, Shreyas Iyer was the aggressor in the stand with a knock of 77 runs off 87 balls.

Ravindra Jadeja later scored a 15-ball 29 down the order to take the score to 326/5 after KL Rahul (8) and Suryakumar Yadav (22) couldn't last long on a surface, where bat didn't come easy on the ball.

Rohit Sharma opted for an aggressive role as he tried to exploit the hardness of the new ball and scored a quickfire 40 runs off just 24 balls before Kagiso Rabada dismissed the Indian captain in the sixth over.

Shubman Gill was bowled soon after through a peach of a delivery by Keshav Maharaj, who deceived the Indian opener with a turn after pitching the ball on the leg stump.

Chasing the target, South Africa were in trouble early as in-form Quinton de Kock was dismissed by Mohammed Siraj for just five runs. At the time of writing, South Africa were 19/1 in six overs.