‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man!’ Ravi Shastri said in retrospect, barely audible over the 90,293 spectators singing and dancing at the hallowed MCG, and while the thunderstorm and rain clouds that had initially cast doubts on the India-Pakistan clash being held in the first place did not come to pass, Virat Kohli did and India are all the much better for it.
There are different ways to try and quantify greatness. You could do it by describing that he’s got over 24,000 international runs, 71 centuries, an average of over 50 in white-ball cricket and just short of it in the purest format. Or you could simply say, ‘As long as Kohli is batting, India will always have a chance.’
Statistics are always suggestive and even a 92%-win probability for Pakistan in the 17th over of the second innings counted for naught with Kohli seeing the cricket ball like a football. He kicked things into gear by taking on Pakistan’s MVP fast-bowler Shaheen Afridi.
A four off the very first ball of the over set things in motion as Kohli made the most out of Afridi’s errors in length. Playing his first international match since July, the left-hander showed signs of rustiness. The second boundary of the over arrived off his mis-attempted yorker that ended up being a full toss. Kohli lofted it through the covers and then punched the air in ecstasy as the ball beat three fielders in a race to the boundary ropes.
If he had previously been acting the intensity that he himself admitted he no longer carried earlier this year, this was him in his natural zone and in the hunt. There was more in store as Shaheen’s move to bowling from over the wicket. didn’t work for him either with the 33-year-old pivoting and pulling and timing the ball to perfection over short fine leg for a gorgeous boundary.
The match was now being played at break-neck pace. With just two overs left, Pakistan fans knew in their heart of hearts that Haris Rauf’s penultimate over would either pen the exclamation mark to an emphatic win or result in complete and utter heartbreak. There was no room for any in-betweens in an India-Pakistan encounter anyway.
Rationale suggested that Rauf was better placed to win his duel. After all, he was bowling at a pace that could pick flesh from bone. Just ask India’s best T20I batter this year, Suryakumar Yadav, who rarely fails to pick the length early. Even he was struggling to see the thunderbolt bounce Rauf generated off the track. Or turn to Rohit Sharma, a veteran of over 140 T20 internationals, who was compelled to play for a line that was always going to end up in the hands of the slip fielder.
The first four balls of his final over of the match were mostly back of the length deliveries angling into the body that cramped the batters for room and left them with no option than to deflect, parry and reassess. Rauf had bowled brilliantly all night and the equation had come down to 28 off 8. Surely, surely, there was no saving grace here for India.
And yet, when Rauf tried to persist with the same line on the next delivery, he may have felt like coming up against a brick wall. Sensing the length, Kohli shuffled towards his left, leaving his precious stumps exposed but it didn’t matter. The modern-day great guided the ball down the ground and into the second-tier of the stadium with a shot that could put contemporary art to shame. The bat, kept true and perfect all the way through before falling back into a state of rest in the palm of its wielder, sang laurels of praise while the stadium began dancing to Kohli’s tunes.
“The king is back,” wrote England’s Danni Wyatt on ICC’s Instagram reel of the same moment but the king was hardly done. If the first six was classical, pre-meditated and dare say, romantic, the second one was turbulent, chaotic, and a sign of the times. A gentle flick of the wrists was all the ball needed to travel over the head of fine leg and into the crowd to breathe life back into India’s innings.
On another night, Rauf’s spell would’ve seen him holding aloft the man of the match award. Here, his head immediately fell, his eyesight veered to the ground. The magnitude of what had just happened got to him.
Virat Kohli bats during the T20 World Cup match against Pakistan.
(Photo: PTI)
The final over, bowled by Mohammad Nawaz meanwhile, played out like a typical Hitchcockian horror thriller. Wickets, a waist-high no ball, wides, a six, a free-hit, broken stumps, squandered opportunities and a plethora of emotions you name it, the game swung from one beat to the next and made you both revel in jubilation and close your eyes in panic.
In the end, fate was kind to India’s lion-hearted efforts and Nawaz let the situation get the better of him when he needed ice-cool precision and liquid nitrogen flowing through his veins.
A wide delivery tied the scores and with just one needed off the final ball, Ravichandran Ashwin lofted the ball over mid-off as the MCG roared into celebration and agony all the same time and fireworks were underway in India.
Diwali had arrived early!
The man, who had led the procession, held his helmet and bat aloft before falling to his knees, as he had done after masterminding the run-chase against Australia in Mohali. That was also a T20 World Cup encounter where he would remain unbeaten on 82 off 51 while chasing 161.
He finished with 82* off 53 here chasing 160, but this was greater. Hyperbole and exaggeration notwithstanding, it was one of the greatest innings in any T20 International. The fans in the stadium knew it, those crying in front of screens all over the nation knew it and Kohli himself admitted it.
"Till today, I always felt my innings against Australia at Mohali was the greatest. Now I will rate this knock a bit higher because of the magnitude of the game," he told his former coach.
While everyone believed it, the statistics all but confirmed it. Objectively, one of the greatest T20 knocks of all time, Kohli's Win Percentage Added factor of +1.116 single-handedly sealed the win for Team India and he had a batting control percentage of 76% in a game where nobody else managed to cross 50%.
And yet, he was at 12 for 21 at one point, struggling to get bat to ball and imposing himself in the middle overs. There were questions of whether Kohli had a place in India’s T20 XI heading into the T20 World Cup given his anchoring role contradicted with India’s newly-adopted aggressive approach to batting as well as his own slump over the last couple of years.
"All these things look great in the end. When I was batting on 12 off 21, I was like I'm messing this game up,” confessed Kohli.
That is probably why this one meant so much more to a man who had made turning up on the big occasions his bread and butter. He looked to the heavens, teary-eyed, vulnerable, and whispered a quiet prayer or a word of gratitude.
There have been unquestionably horrible days in the past, there may be plenty of failures ahead, but if that is the price that Kohli has to pay for him and for all of us to experience sporting moments as rich and grand, it would probably be a deal he would sign off on.
Harsha Bhogle said on the mic that this is the kind of stuff that makes men into legends and what that they truly cherish and remember when all is said and done. Rohit Sharma lifted him on his shoulders and spun him around as he took in the reverence of 90,000+ fans singing 'Chak De India!’. And the man who had inspired Kohli to play cricket, Sachin Tendulkar tweeted it was undoubtedly the best innings of his life.
If cricketing Gods existed and walked among us, they would probably nod in agreement and even be a little envious of Virat Kohli’s feat today. It was not only an innings for the ages, it was the masterpiece of a lifetime.
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