Former Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni achieved yet another milestone in international cricket on Monday when he recorded his 100th half-century in international cricket across formats, during his innings of 79 in the ODI against Australia.
The wicketkeeper-batsman has 33 half centuries in Tests, 66 in the 50-over game and one in T20 Internationals.
Dhoni had recently become the first wicketkeeper to get 100 international stumpings, on the Sri Lankan tour.
Cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar tops the chart with a total of 164 international 50s followed by Sri Lankan legend Kumara Sangakkara who has 153 fifties. South African Jacques Kallis occupies the third spot in the list at 149. All these three batsmen have retired.
Other Indians in the list who are also retired, include batting legends— Rahul Dravid (jointly 4th with erstwhile Aussie skipper Ricky Ponting at 146) and Sourav Ganguly at 107, according to statistics maintained by ESPN Cricinfo.
Current Indian captain Virat Kohli sits at 75 with a lot of cricket left in him.
Mohammad Azharuddin and Virender Sehwag have scored 79 and 72 half centuries each in their international career.
Like Dhoni who is at the dusk of his career, South African batting sensation AB De Villiers and hard hitting West Indian batsman Chris Gayle have 102 and 97 half centuries respectively to their name..
Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene and Pakistan’s Inzamam-ul-Haq are the other leading batsmen on the list with 136 and 129 fifties respectively, followed by Shivnarine Chanderpaul who has 125 fifties.
Brian Lara, the record holder for highest score in Test cricket, has 111 international fifties.
(Note: The number of 50s is counted only for scores of 50-99 runs.)