Statistical highlights of the opening day play in the first cricket Test between India and South Africa here.
# Virat Kohli (119 off 181 balls) posted his career-best score in Tests, bettering the 116 off 213 balls vs Australia in the 2011-12 Adelaide Test. Thus, he has recorded hundreds in consecutive Tests away from home.
# Kohli’s first century vs South Africa is his fifth in Tests. He is the eighth Indian batsman to post a century in Tests in South Africa. Sachin Tendulkar had recorded five hundreds in Tests in South Africa.
# Kohli became the third Indian batsman to register a century in his debut innings against South Africa in Tests.
He has joined Pravin Amre (103 at Durban in 1992-93) and Virender Sehwag (105 at Bloemfontein in 2002-03). Sehwag and Amre had recorded the feats on Test debut.
# Kohli has become the third batsman after Shikhar Dhawan and AB de Villiers to post six international hundreds this year.
# Kohli’s superb hundred is his first in first match innings of a Test match.
# Sachin Tendulkar’s 146 against South Africa at Cape Town in January 2011 was the last century by an Indian number four batsman in Tests.
# Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the first Indian player and the 14th overall to register half-century of Tests as captain.
# Ajinkya Rahane (43 not out) has recorded his highest Test score.
# India has not recorded an opening partnership of fifty or more in sixteen innings away from home in Tests. In the last 25 innings on foreign soil since January 2011, the only 50-plus opening partnership was 63 between Gautam Gambhir and Abhinav Mukund vs England at Lord’s in July 2011.
# Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli put on 89 – India’s highest third-wicket partnership vs South Africa at The Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg, eclipsing the 69 between Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar in December 2006.