Indian veteran Virat Kohli holds many impressive batting records: Most One-Day International (ODI) centuries (50), most hundreds in a calendar year (11) , highest runs in the time period (2,818) and most IPL centuries (8).

However, few cricket enthusiasts know about a unique feat of Kohli, the bowler. He’s the first and only cricketer to take a wicket on the zeroth ball of his career in any format of the game.

In 2011, Kohli was making his Twenty20 International (T20I) bowling debut against England when he got Kevin Pietersen before even bowling his first legal delivery. The bowler had the batsman stumped off a wide.

While many players, including Graeme Swann, Sunil Narian and Shakib Al Hasan, have taken a wicket on the 0th ball of a T20I spell, none did so before the forest legitimate delivery of their career in the format, or any men’s international format for that matter.

Kohli’s figures read 0.0-0-1-1 after Pieteren’s wicket.

Interest in this stat surged after it featured in Google’s Googlies campaign. A Googly is a piece of trivia gamified to intrigue users into looking up answers to queries such as the one in question.

Kohli, who bowls right-arm medium, has twin best figures of 1/13 in both ODIs and T20Is, where he has taken 5 and 4 wickets respectively. While he has also bowled 29.1 overs in Tests, he’s gone wicketless throughout.

In Cricket, there’s a name for wickets on specific balls and of a particular type, like a golden duck or a king’s pair. Although there are many such terms for batting dismissals, describing Kohli’s 0th-ball-of-the-career wicket is likely to remain a mouthful for the foreseeable future.

Overall, the player has bowled 164.5 overs, including three maidens, since his debut in 2008. Kohli has conceded 968 runs at an average of 107.55, taking 9 wickets with a cross-format economy of 5.87.

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