Virat Kohli Special: Throwback To When RCB Legend Crushed SRH, Surpassed Jos Buttler

Virat Kohli celebrating his century against SRH in IPL 2023 [Source: @IPL/x]

Not many modern-day batters can command a game’s narrative and nuance like Virat Kohli, an Indian run-scoring behemoth whose finest works often arrive when expectations weigh the heaviest. More often than not, it is in such moments that the legendary all-format batter elevates himself beyond the ordinary, regardless of the team he is facing or the conditions on offer.

Among the many such occasions across his decorated career, one arrived during the fag end of the IPL 2023 season where the RCB franchise found itself in a must-win encounter against the SRH to keep its playoff hopes alive.

When Virat Kohli kept RCB’s hopes alive with a 63-ball ton

With two league games remaining in IPL 2023, the RCB franchise reached a stage where they were required to win both those matches in a bid to qualify for the playoffs. The first of those two challenges came against an Aiden Markram-led Sunrisers Hyderabad side on May 18 at Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in match 65 of the IPL 2023 season.

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Chasing 187 for a win, RCB openers Virat Kohli and captain Faf du Plessis got their team off to a flier by racing to 64-0 at the end of the powerplay. Even though Faf was outscoring Kohli up until the halfway stage of the innings, the latter of the two legendary batters stepped up the accelerator and slapped an electrifying 35-ball half-century.

He took just another 27 deliveries to convert it into a century, reaching the landmark figure off 62 balls with 12 boundaries and four huge sixes. Virat Kohli eventually got his innings curtailed by Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the 18th over of the run chase.

However, with both Kohli and Faf du Plessis stitching together a 172-run opening partnership in just 17.5 overs, the game was already out of SRH’s grasp as RCB marched to a comprehensive eight-wicket win with four balls to spare.

The century that enhanced Virat Kohli’s IPL legacy

The innings not only kept RCB’s playoff hopes alive for the next three days, but also helped Virat Kohli hammer down his sixth IPL century. He surpassed then Rajasthan Royals opener and all-time English great Jos Buttler in registering the highest number of IPL centuries in history.

Kohli even extended the gap later that weekend by slapping his second successive hundred and the seventh of his IPL career overall, doing so against Gujarat Titans in Bengaluru. The legendary right-hander compiled 101* runs off 61 balls in RCB’s must-win final league match, before Shubman Gill doused Kohli’s juggernaut with a match-winning Titans ton.

Virat Kohli and his love affair with RCB in IPL

Virat Kohli holds a slew of some elite batting records in the IPL. Incidentally, the modern-day batting great holds all those records for the RCB franchise, considering the prolific right-hander remains the only player in history to have played all his IPL matches in its first 18 editions for a single team.

To date, he remains the highest run-scorer in IPL history by a landslide with 8,661 runs in his tally from 259 innings. Kohli is also the leading century-maker with eight hundreds, and is set to step into the IPL 2026 stage this month for the first time in his career as a ‘defending champion’.

As per the IPL 2026 schedule, Kohli’s RCB will commence their title-defense on March 28 with a match against SRH in Bengaluru.

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