India batter Tilak Varma set a world record on Saturday (November 23), becoming the first batter ever to score three consecutive T20 hundreds.
The 2024 edition of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, India's premier domestic T20 competition kicked off on Saturday, with three matches – Arunachal Pradesh v Himachal Pradesh, Saurashtra v Sikkim and Hyderabad v Meghalaya – scheduled for a 9:00AM start.
Hyderabad were led by India and Mumbai Indians batter Tilak Varma, and he stole the show at the Niranjan Shah Stadium in Rajkot. After Hyderabad were put in to bat, they lost opener Rahul Singh Gehlaut in the very first over for a three-ball duck, bringing Tilak to the crease.
Tilak smashed his way to a stunning score of 151, his highest in T20 cricket – dotting the knock with 14 fours and 10 sixes. He was particularly severe on Dippu Sangma, scoring 50 runs off the 18 balls he faced from the bowler. Dippu eventually dismissed Tilak off the final ball of the innings as Hyderabad scored 248-4.
In the course of his knock, Tilak became the first Indian man to register a score of 150 or more in a single T20 innings. The previous record for highest individual score was held by Shreyas Iyer, who scored 147 for Mumbai against Sikkim in the 2019 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.
In the third and fourth T20Is against South Africa earlier this month, he slammed 107* and 120* in back-to-back innings, making him just the fifth man to do so at the international level. This is his first innings since that series, making him the first player in the history of the game to score T20 centuries in three consecutive innings.
Two players have come close to achieving the feat, with three centuries in four innings. Australian batter Michael Klinger reeled off scores of 126*, 69*, 104* and 104* for Gloucestershire in the T20 Blast in 2015, and Shubman Gill made 101, 104*, 42 and 129 for Gujarat Titans in the 2023 Indian Premier League. A few other players have managed to score two centuries in a row.
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