JUST FOR THE RECORD
India captain Virat Kohli was on a record breaking spree on the third day of the second cricket Test against Sri Lanka as he reached a number of milestone en-route his 19th hundred in longest format. The most significant among them is the world record of most international hundreds in a calendar year as a captain -- 10. Kohli hit six ODI and four Test hundreds in 2017.
Twice former Australian captain Ricky Ponting had hit nine hundreds across two formats in 2005 and 2006, while former South Africa skipper Graeme Smith also had nine international hundreds to his credit once.
Kohli now has five double hundreds against five different countries -- West Indies, New Zealand, England, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He is only 25 runs short of completing 5000 runs in Test cricket
On the national front, Kohli now has most number of hundreds by an Indian captain -- 12 in all, breaking Sunil Gavaskar's previous record of 11.
As an international captain with minimum 10 hundreds in Tests, Kohli has the best conversion rate -- even better than Sir Don Bradman and Michael Clarke.
In 31 Tests, where Kohli has been the captain, he has crossed 50-run mark 16 times and converted them into three figures on 12 occasions. This makes it a staggering 75 per cent conversion rate. Both Bradman and Clarke's conversion rate from 50 to 100 as captains has been 66.66 percent.
The number of double centuries -- five is at par with Rahul Dravid and just one less than the legendary Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag (6 each). one can't take away the fact that India was more than 200 runs ahead by that time. But Rohit's innings will certainly give Kohli some relief with Ajinkya Rahane going through a wretched stretch of form. Kohli started with a square drive and then hit cover drive and on drives.
Whenever Suranga Lakmal (0/111 in 29 overs) strayed on Kohli's pads, the skipper repeatedly whipped the deliveries through midwicket region.
It was a whip to deep midwicket for a single that brought Kohli's 19th hundred in Test cricket. There wasn't any exaggerated celebration this time unlike Kolkata, where he had bailed the team out of trouble.
Lakmal and Lahiru Gamage (1/97 in 35 overs) bowled with deep square leg, deep fine leg and deep extra cover making it clear that they did not want to concede boundaries. The easy singles were there for the taking.
Sri Lankan bowlers were unable to find an answer to their woes on a benign pitch that had forced one of their bowlers to "alter the condition of the ball".
After India started the day at 312 for 2, the Sri Lankan bowlers lacked stomach for fight which was evident from the field placing of Dinesh Chandimal.
When Shanaka (1/103 in 26.1 overs) got wicketkeeper Niroshan Dickwella to stand up, it was evident that how deep the negative mindset had crept into the Sri Lankan system.
Rangana Herath (1/81 in 39 overs) was restrictive but didn't bowl any wicket-taking delivery.
In the first session itself, it looked like the visitors are going through the motion only waiting for Kohli to declare the innings.
As a contest, it became lopsided from the moment Sri Lanka were all out for 205.
By the time, India declared their first innings, the shoulders had drooped and energy sapped. No wonder Sadeera Samarwickrama (0) had no clue that Ishant Sharma's back of the length delivery would be jag back after landing on the seam to clip his off-bail. It proved that Sri Lanka were already out of the match.
The formalities in all likelihood would be completed well inside four days -- as it has been the case with most of the Sri Lanka Tests this season.