Virat Kohli on Thursday moved past his former India teammate MS Dhoni in the list of most capped (Test+ODI+T20I) players from his country when he was named in the playing XI for the first Test against New Zealand in Bengaluru. Kohli has now been capped 536 times for India – one more than the legendary Dhoni who finished his career with 535 appearances.
Kohli is now the second-most capped player for India but. Batting legend Sachin Tendulkar is sitting pretty at the top of this list with a whopping 664 matches across formats for India during his storied international career.
Another batting great and former India head coach Rahul Dravid is third with 504 caps while Rohit Sharma is fourth with 486 caps and Mohammed Azharuddin completes the top-five with 433 matches.
Kohli though was dismissed for a nine-ball duck in the opening session of the first Test at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium as New Zealand exploited the seam friendly conditions to rip out India’s top order inside the first 10 overs.
The ongoing Test is Kohli’s 116th of international career which is the joint-seventh most for India alongside Dilip Vengsarkar. Tendulkar leads this list as well with 200 Tests between 1989 and 2013 which is also an all-time record.
The 35-year-old will hope to make amends in the second innings as he’s eyeing another milestone. The former skipper is 53 runs short of completing 9,000 runs in Test cricket which will make him the fourth Indian after Sunil Gavaskar, Tendulkar and Dravid to do so.
The series opening Test between India and New Zealand got underway on Thursday after the first day was washed out by rain. Rohit won the coin toss and opted to bat first but the host were reduced to 10/3 in no time.
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