Colombo,
Virat Kohli termed it an honour to have equalled Ricky Ponting’s 30 ODI hundreds but the Indian captain feels that it will take one hell of an effort to reach anywhere near Sachin Tendulkar’s world record of 49 hundreds.

“The great man (Sachin Tendulkar) is quite a bit away. That’s going to take a hell of an effort. Again, I am not thinking about that. It’s only about the team where even if I score a 90 not out and the team goes across the line, it’s good enough for me,” Kohli replied to a question on surpassing Tendulkar’s record of 49 ODI centuries.

“It’s an honour for me to equal someone like Ricky Ponting. That’s not something that you aim for but obviously he’s a great player and as batsmen we all respect what these legends have done.”

Kohli once again stressed that a player can not play for records and the team comes first. “I look to perform as well as I can for the team. These things keep happening as you go along in your career. You don’t target these things, but those stat windows are hard to neglect because they pop up everywhere after you have achieved something,” said Kohli.

Will select 20-25 players as WC core group: Kohli

Kohli has his eyes firmly fixed on the World Cup in England and the Indian captain wants to address the selection issue in a transparent manner selecting a bunch of 20-25 players, who will form the core group going into the marquee event in 2019. Kohli will be facing a selection dilemma over Umesh Yadav, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Mohammed Shami, all of whom are available for selection for the upcoming limited-overs cricket in India.

“The best thing is transparency. We will address it and tell them that this is a bunch of 20-25 people, who will make the probables list for the World Cup and everyone has an equal opportunity to be tested at different stages,” Kohli said.