India opener Rohit Sharma made history by becoming the first cricketer to score five centuries in a single edition of the World Cup, when he scored a hundred against Sri Lanka in the group stage match at Headingley in Leeds today.
The stylish right-hander reached the milestone off 92 runs, with a boundary off Kasun Rajitha in the last ball of the 29th over. Sharma, however, couldn't carry on much longer as he fell for 103, foxed by a slower delivery from Rajitha, and spooning a simple catch to mid-off.
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Sharma also equalled Indian cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar in the total number of World Cup hundreds—six.
Sharma's other hundred (137) was against Bangladesh in the 2015 World Cup, at the MCG, while Tendulkar had amassed his six hundreds in four World Cups (1996, 1999, 2003 and 2011).
The 32-year-old opener is likely to go past Tendulkar in the highest number of runs in a single World Cup as he has already scored 647 runs from nine matches, just 26 short of Tendulkar's record of 673 runs in the 2003 World Cup.
Sharma also became the 11th batsman to hit three consecutive centuries in ODIs.
Before the match he was tied on four centuries with Sri Lanka's Kumar Sangakkara, who achieved the feat in the 2015 edition. The others in the top five are Mark Waugh (3 in 1996), Sourav Ganguly (3 in 2003) and Matthew Hayden (3 in 2007).
