Vijay Hazare Trophy: Kohli, Rohit show the fire still rages within
Opening day of premier 50-over domestic competition sees slew of batting records across the country
The spotlight was trained on the Big Two’s return to domestic cricket and neither of them disappointed — touching new landmarks on the opening day of the 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy competition. While both Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma showed the hunger with fluent centuries in a winning cause for Delhi and Mumbai, respectively, the precocious Vaibhav Suryavanshi, his colleague Sakibul Gani and Ishan Kishan also lit up the competition with sparkling centuries.
It was a pity that neither Kohli nor Sharma’s matches could be streamed live for their legion of fans, the former’s classy 131 off 101 balls against Andhra being played behind closed doors at the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru. The match had to be shifted from Chinnaswamy Stadium at the eleventh hour after the Karnataka home ministry’s refusal in view of security concerns after the deadly stampede during Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s IPL victory celebrations in June.
The owner of 83 international centuries with nothing really left to prove, Kohli went past Sachin Tendulkar to become the fastest to 16,000 runs in List A cricket, reaching the milestone in his 330th innings. The Little Master had reached the milestone in 391 innings, finishing with 21,999 runs from 538 innings in 551 List A games of which 18,426 came from 452 ODI innings. Kohli now has 14,557 runs from 296 ODI innings.
Tendulkar and Kohli are the only Indians in the top five on the list of fastest to 16,000 runs in List A cricket. The others following them are Gordon Greenidge (422 innings), Ricky Ponting (430 innings) and Graham Gooch and Viv Richards (435 innings each).
When Sharma got to his century earlier in the day, it made him the second oldest — at 38 years and 238 days — to get to triple figures in a Vijay Hazare Trophy match, the oldest being Bengal’s Anustup Majumdar, who scored two centuries in the 2023-24 season when he was 39-plus.
'Hitman' Sharma, who had his every stroke cheered lustily by the Sawai Man Singh stadium crowd, finished with 155 off 94 balls to be at par with David Warner’s record of most 150-plus scores in the format: nine. The former India captain hit 18 fours and nine sixes in his innings as Mumbai won by eight wickets.
Kohli’s decision to play the tournament came after weeks of speculation, but his return also coincided with a rich vein of form. He was the Player of the Series in the ODIs against South Africa late last month, hitting two hundreds and an unbeaten half-century. Sharma, too, gave strong evidence that he was far from a spent force with a superb hundred in Australia, followed by two half-centuries in three innings against South Africa.
Meanwhile, Sakibul Gani and in-form Ishan Kishan hammered the fastest and second fastest centuries for an Indian in men’s List A cricket — Gani taking 32 balls for Bihar against Andhra Pradesh while Kishan took a ball more for Jharkhand against Karnataka in Ahmedabad. Only two batters have scored quicker centuries than Gani’s in List A cricket: Jake Fraser-McGurk and A.B. de Villiers.
Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Gani’s teammate who came in for some criticism for his cavalier approach in the Under-19 Asia Cup final in Dubai, scored an electric 190 off 84 balls including a 36-ball ton. Bihar rustled up a mammoth 574 for six off 50 overs against Arunachal Pradesh and wrapped up the match by 197 runs.