Star India batter Virat Kohli ended his much-talked-about century drought in the longest format during the just-concluded fourth Border-Gavaskar Trophy Test against Australia in Ahmedabad.
Kohli, who hasn’t hit a Test ton since November 2019, scored 186 to help the hosts take a sizeable first-innings lead of 91 runs. It was the 28th hundred of his Test career and his 75th in international cricket
After the fourth Test ended in a draw on Monday (March 13), Virat Kohli admitted that he was desperate to reach the three-figure mark as it had made his life a little complicated.
“If I will have to be brutally honest, it does become a little complicated and difficult because the moment you step out of the hotel room, right from the guy outside the room to the guy in the lift to the bus drivers, everyone was saying ‘we want a hundred.’ So it does play on your mind all the time,” Kohli, who smashed a Test century for the first time in 41 innings, said while speaking with head coach Rahul Dravid on bcci.tv.
“But that’s the beauty of playing cricket for so long as well, to have these complications and to overcome these challenges and then it comes together nicely as it did in this game, then that gives you the extra confidence to go beyond and go further and start enjoying the cricket a lot more,” he added.
Kohli is glad that he managed to break the century jinx just before the World Test Championship (WTC) final, slated to be played between India and Australia at The Oval from June 7 to 11.
“I am happy that it came at the right time just before the WTC final, and I will definitely be going there very relaxed and very excited,” he said.
Virat Kohli further said that more than reaching triple figures, it was his own performance that was troubling him.
“To be honest, I have led the complications to grow on me a little bit because of my own shortcomings. I think the desperation to get that three-figure mark is something that can grow on you as a batsman we have all experienced that in some stage or the other,” Kohli stated.
“I let that happen to me to a certain extent but also, the flip side to it is that I am not a guy who is happy with forty and forty-five. I have always been someone who takes a lot of pride in performing for the team.
“It’s not like Virat Kohli should stand out. It’s like when I am batting on 40 I know I can get a 150 here and that would help my team so that was eating me a lot.
“Why I am not able to get that big score for the team is because I always took pride in the fact that when the team needed me I would step up and perform in different conditions and situations. The fact that I was not able to do that bothered me.
“Not so much the milestone as such because I never played for the milestones. A lot of people asked me this question how do you keep scoring hundreds and I always told them a hundred is something that happens along the way within my goal, which is to bat as long as possible for the team and get as many runs as possible.”
