Virat Kohli vs Sachin's records : Can he or can he not?

#4 Highest number of centuries in ODIs

The kind of form he is in, he picked this ball yesterday afternoon - Harsha Bhogle

Virat Kohli scores one-day hundreds for breakfast. Such has been his prolific nature in the format that something short of a hundred is often considered a failure, much like Sachin. He is at his best while chasing, and if Virat Kohli gets going in a run-chase, he wins the match for the team on most occasions, increasing his hundred count on the way.

Sachin was just one short of '50 ODI hundreds' mark when he retired from the format. His 49 hundreds came in 452 innings, at a rate of 9.22 innings per hundred which was way above his contemporaries and people who played before him. Virat is already sitting at 32 hundreds in 192 innings, and a series without a Kohli hundred looks like an impossible dream.

Virat's centuries have come at a rate of exactly 6 innings per hundred. In this era, Hashim Amla has scored at 5.96 innings per hundred, Quinton de Kock at 6.76 innings per hundred, Shikhar Dhawan at 8.36 innings per hundred and AB de Villiers at 8.6 innings per hundred. Babar Azam has scored 7 hundreds in 35 innings!

Virat might not be way above his contemporaries, but what this shows is that ODI hundreds are now being hit at a rate higher than ever. Run scoring has become easier and fast-paced. If a batsman gets to his hundred before the 35th over and then gets out, it is assumed as a job half done. Such has become the nature of the game.

Virat is only 18 hundreds short of breaking Sachin's record. In 160 matches at 6 innings per hundred, he would score 26 more. Even a 'slower' rate of 8 innings per hundred would give him 20 centuries. By the end of his career, he would not only break Sachin's record, he would sail past it comfortably.

But how much ahead will he be of the people around him, only time will tell.