SA vs IND: KL Rahul hit first test century on South Africa soil against South Africa in Centurion test

Indian Test team’s opener batsman KL Rahul presented amazing batting in the first innings of the Boxing Day Test match against South Africa. In the first innings of the Centurion Test match against the Proteas, he started the series brilliantly and scored a century. While this was KL Rahul’s first century in Test cricket on South African soil, it was the 7th century of his Test career.

KL Rahul’s century:

In this match, KL Rahul batted very carefully from the beginning and along with Mayank Agarwal for the first wicket, gave India a strong start with a century partnership of 117 runs. Mayank was dismissed for 60, but KL continued to bat in his style and completed his century off 218 balls with a four. KL Rahul hit one six and 14 fours during his century.

In the year 2017-18, when KL Rahul came to South Africa to play Test series for the first time under the captaincy of Virat Kohli, he could not be much successful. In the three-match Test series, he got a chance to play two Test matches. He had scored 10,4,0,16 runs in four innings of two test matches on the last tour. Out of this, he had scored 10 and 4 runs in the Centurion Test, but this time in Centurion, he completed the earlier task and succeeded in scoring a century in the first innings itself.

KL Rahul broke Virender Sehwag’s record

This was KL Rahul’s fifth century as an opener outside Asia in Test cricket. He broke the record of Virender Sehwag who had scored 4 centuries in Test cricket as an Indian opener batsman outside Asia. At the same time, Sunil Gavaskar has the most centuries as an Indian Test opener outside Asia.

Top 5 Indian opener batsmen with most centuries in Tests outside Asia:

15 centuries – Sunil Gavaskar (81 innings)
5 centuries – KL Rahul (34 innings)
4 centuries – Virender Sehwag (59 innings)
3 Centuries – Vinoo Mankad, Ravi Shastri (19 innings)