VIRAT Kohli has joined some of the greats of the game in posting his third Test double century of the year, punishing England’s bowlers at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.Kohli is just the fifth man to score three Test scores of 200 or more in a calendar year, joining Sir Donald Bradman (1930), Ricky Ponting (2003), Michael Clarke (2012) and Brendon McCullum (2014).
Having never scored more than 169 at Test level before this year, Kohli has peeled off scores of 200 against the West Indies in Antigua, 211 against New Zealand in Indore and he was unbeaten on 212 at lunch on day four in Mumbai. He is the first man to score a double century in three consecutive series in the same year.
Kohli has also now scored more than 2500 runs this year across all formats, only the 11th player to do so. While none of the previous 11 had averaged 70 in that year, Kohli’s average for the year was 91.32 at lunch on the fourth day.
The Indian skipper’s performance in Mumbai earned high praise from some greats of the game, with former captain Sunil Gavaskar labelling it “one of the best centuries that I have seen”.
Former England captain Michael Vaughan also called Kohli “a genius”.
Kohli has been a revelation since he took over the Test captaincy from MS Dhoni in late 2014; in 21 matches as skipper he now has eight Test centuries, including three doubles, and his average of 66.87 as skipper is the second-highest of any player to have been captain in 20 or more Tests, behind only Bradman’s extraordinary mark of 101.51
By lunch on day four, Kohli had tallied 617 runs for the series, the second-most ever for a series between India and England and the most on Indian soil. Graham Gooach’s mark of 752 runs in 1990, scored in just three Tests, is the record.