Under cloudy skies, on a damp pitch and against a moving ball, Indian captain Virat Kohli played perhaps his best Test innings his bright career so far. He put all his England demons to rest as he held fort even as the rest of his batting mates fell by the wayside against persistent seam and swing bowling.
Well, he scored 134 in 10 innings in 2014, and now, he has slammed 149 in only one innings to not only mute his detractors but also drag India along to gain parity against the hosts.
Numbers fall by the wayside
Along the way, he also demolished many barriers and held several records became his refuge. We take a look at all the records which Kohli broke and owned during his epic. Also, the different stats which trickled along in the day.
1 - Virat Kohli completed 7,000 Test runs in international cricket as a captain in just 124 innings. He is the swiftest player to reach the milestone and slammed the previous best by Brian Lara who got to the milestone in 164 innings.
1 - Sam Curran (20y-60d), the young Surrey bowler who sliced through the Indian top order, became youngest England bowler to claim a four-wicket haul in a Test innings.
2 - The Indian captain has the second highest 50 to 100 conversion rate at 57.89 per cent and is only next to Sir Donald Bradman.
5 - Ben Stokes finally hit his straps with the ball and used the conditions to hoop the ball around and in the process became the 5th English player to score 2500+ runs and then take 100 wickets in Tests after Tony Greig, Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff and Stuart Broad
5 - When the Indian captain scored his half-century, he joined Vijay Hazare (89 in 1952), Mansoor Ali Kahn Pataudi jr (64 in 1967), Ajit Wadekar (85 in 1971) & Mohd Azharuddin (121 in 1990) as the 5th Indian to register a 50-plus in his very first inns as captain in England! Also, he became the second captain to notch up a century in England.
6 - Virat Kohli becomes the 6th captain in history to miss out on 150 by 1 run.
18- Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan looked promising and not only kept the England bowlers at bay but also got off the blocks rapidly and when they put together 50 runs for the first wicket, it came after 18 innings after Abhinav Mukund and Gautam Gambhir put on 63 in the first innings at Lord's in July 2011.
