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Virat Kohli's race to Tendulkar's mythical 100 centuries record: Number of years needed for him - statistical prediction
Virat Kohli, currently with 84 international centuries, may need 6-9 more years to reach 100.
Virat Kohli sits on 84 international hundreds today - 30 in Tests, 53 in ODIs, and one in T20Is - with Sachin Tendulkar’s mythical 100-hundreds mark still 16 away. The gap looks small on paper. The real question is brutal: at 37, as a retired Test and T20I cricketer now committed only to ODIs, how many years of near-peak output does he realistically have left?
Where Kohli stands now
Let us start with the raw scale. Kohli has over 27,000 international runs, already in the all-time elite tier. In ODIs alone, Kohli has 14,557 runs from 296 innings at an average of 58.70 with 53 centuries - a century in roughly one out of every 5.6 ODI innings.
How fast does Kohli need to go from here?
He needs 16 more international centuries and, with Tests and T20Is effectively off the table, we can treat that as 16 ODI hundreds.
Two things now drive the projection:
- How often does he still score hundreds?
- How often does he actually bat?
India’s ODI runway to the 2027 World Cup
The first part is the easier one. The current announced fixtures give India a busy ODI calendar through to the 2027 World Cup - multiple three-match bilateral series plus the World Cup itself. Add those up, and you are looking at roughly the mid-30s in total ODIs between now and the end of that tournament.
It is reasonable to assume that Virat Kohli will get 30-32 ODI innings between now and the 2027 World Cup.
Now, let us layer his scoring pattern on top of that.
His career century rate is:
- 53 Hundreds in 296 ODI innings - 0.179 centuries per innings
- Or, one century every 5.6 innings
In the last few years, his “Kohli 2.0” phase has been even sharper - roughly a hundred every 4.4 innings post his drought. That gives us two honest baselines: the long-term rate and the hot-phase version.
What can he realistically add by 2027?
Running three simple scenarios just until the 2027 World Cup, assuming around 30 ODI innings for Kohli in that window.
Scenario | Rate (100s per inns) | Inns assumed | Expected 100s to 2027 | Total 100s by 2027* |
| Conservative (age drag) | ~0.16 (1 in 6.25) | 30 | ~4–5 | 88–89 |
| Career-rate Kohli | 0.179 (1 in 5.6) | 30 | ~5–6 | 89–90 |
| “Kohli 2.0” purple patch level | ~0.22 (1 in 4.5) | 30 | ~6–7 | 90–92 |
Even in the generous scenario, where he maintains something close to his recent purple patch, Kohli probably finishes the 2027 World Cup with around 90-92 international hundreds.
That immediately reframes the chase: the 2027 World Cup isn’t the finish line. At best, it gets him to the foothills of the 90s, still needing 8-10 more hundreds after the tournament.
Also Read: “Ro de, ro de”: Virat Kohli roasts Kuldeep Yadav as he receives impact player of the series medal in dressing room
The task after 2027 - where the real grind begins
Post 2027, the assumptions become trickier:
- India will begin or accelerate a transition in the ODI squad.
- Kohli will be edging towards 40 by then.
Even so, let’s assume he remains first-choice for a while and India still play a healthy diet of bilateral play in ICC tournaments. A realistic late-career workload would be:
- 10-12 ODI innings per year.
If he ends 2027 with, say, 91 centuries, he still needs nine more.
Now let us attach rates again:
- At a career-ish, 0.17-0.18 hundreds per innings, 9 more hundreds mean roughly 50-55 ODI innings.
At 10-12 innings a year, that works out to:
- Best case: about 4-5 more years
- More conservative: about 6-7 more years
So, overall, if Kohli actually chases that record, at his career century scoring rate, it would still take him 6-7 years of cricket to reach 100 centuries. At his best, it would take him 4-5 years, and at a more conservative rate, it would take him 8-9 years. It waits to be seen how long he decides to play and how far he is willing to go for the mythical record.
