Follow UsKL Rahul struck a brilliant century at Lord’s on July 12 (Saturday) and became only the third Indian opener after Ravi Shastri and Rahul Dravid to score more than one century as an opener in England.
This was also Rahul’s fourth century in England, and now he is chasing multiple records with at least five more innings to come on this India tour of England.
Here are three records that Rahul can break on this tour.
In England, it is hard for an opener batter who is not from England to score a century and to do that multiple times; it is almost next to impossible. That is the reason why only Alan Melville of South Africa (1947), Arthur Morris of Australia (1948) and Gordon Greenidge of the West Indies (1976) have had more than two (3) centuries as openers in a series in England.
Rahul, who has already scored two centuries in five innings, has it in him to utilise an unusually hot English summer, because of which the pitches are flatter and the squares harder, making the ball travel faster, and break the record by scoring two more.
The Indian opener already has 336 runs and, with five more innings to go, Rahul can very well go past the likes of Ravi Shastri (336), Rohit Sharma (368), and Murali Vijay (402).
However, it would take some effort from him to go beyond Sunil Gavaskar, who scored 542 runs in just seven innings as an opener in 1979.
But if he is able to score at least 207 runs in the next five innings, Rahul will become the opener with the most runs in a single Test series in England.
Rahul smashed his fourth ton when he scored his second hundred at Lord’s during the first innings of the third Test of the five-match series. However, with that one ton, he is now level with Rishabh Pant at four centuries in England, the second-most by any Indian, behind Rahul Dravid, who scored six.
However, the former India coach Dravid took 13 matches and 23 innings to do that and Rahul, who is playing his 12th game, has already played 23 innings.
So, though Rahul does have five more innings at his disposal in this series, he could beat Dravid only in the number of centuries scored by an Indian in England, but not in terms of the least number of matches taken to do that. But to be able to get past Dravid and get to the top of that list, Rahul still needs two more centuries, which are always tough to get as an opener.