15 years. Yup, that long it has taken for a batter representing Kolkata Knight Riders to emulate the legendary Brendon McCullum by scoring a century for the franchise. On Sunday afternoon, allrounder Venkatesh Iyer broke the long wait with a 49-ball 100 against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium in an IPL 2023 clash between the two giants.
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It’s scarcely believable that no KKR batter managed a hundred since McCullum set the IPL bandwagon rolling with a mind-boggling 158 in the very first match of the T20 league, played against Royal Challengers Bangalore on April 18, 2008.
Walking in to bat at no. 3 after the dismissal of N Jagadeesan, Iyer propelled the KKR innings in the forward direction and eventually fell on 104 off 51. His innings featured six fours and nine sixes.
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Iyer is the second player to score a century this season after Harry Brook of Sunrisers Hyderabad slammed the maiden ton, against KKR earlier this week. Brook made an unbeaten 100 off 55 to set up a 23-run win for his franchise.
Iyer made his IPL debut for KKR in 2021 and has so far played 27 matches and scored 786 runs including a century and six half-centuries.
Impressive IPL performances in maiden season fast-tracked his India debut as well. A couple of months later, he made his T20I debut in November 2021 and in January 2022, played his first ODI as well.
However, he is yet to make his mark in international cricket but his latest exploits will certainly do his confidence a world of good.
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Thanks to his maiden century, KKR posted a challenging 185/6 against MI.
Chris Gayle holds the record for scoring the most numbers of centuries in IPL history with six such scores against his name. His 175 against the now defunct Pune Warriors India is the highest individual score in the tournament history.
Virat Kohli with five centuries is second on the list while David Warner, Shane Watson, KL Rahul and Jos Buttler jointly occupy the third spot with four hundreds each.
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