Has Team India ever had a batsman better than this when performing under immense pressure? Virat Kohli has a mind like a sponge that simply soaks up pressure. He has the heart rate of a dead man, suggests a cheeky line in a live blog on the game. There is no calmer, cooler mind in the game today. Is he greater than Sachin? The jury is probably still out on that. But, in the chase, Kohli has no equal now since he has surpassed even that great finisher Dhoni.
It is not only his current form — average well past 100 in the face of T20 targets in the last seven of India’s successes batting second — which suggests he is the best we have ever had. It is his ability to think through the toughest situations and bat in the safest manner possible even in the most aggressive form of the game which makes him the greatest player when it comes to crafting winning innings in the face of adversity. There is nothing more enervating in the game than a run chase against an asking rate. Kohli’s sangfroid would have made Ice Man proud.
“He has the moxie of a million men,” says another line as a blogger goes gaga over one of the most controlled innings ever seen in a chase. We are talking boundaries here, not bludgeoned hits sailing over the boundary, which sometimes even ordinary men achieve in T20 cricket. Kohli was batting in a sublime and proper cricketing manner even in the slam-bang version of the game. Orthodoxy is not considered the greatest virtue in T20s but when men like Kohli and Joe Root bat like this and win games it tells you a thing or two about how the purest methods can also be the best.
The penultimate over usually has the most decisive effect on a game, or at least the chasing team tries to make it so as the stress of a final over with over 10 to get is best avoided. But look at the imperial manner in which Kohli achieves this win - a drive carved through point for four forcing the bowler to stray down leg under pressure and the ball is past the rope in the blink of an eye. Too easy! Then comes the deliberate carve over cover, precisely played in the air to beat the outstretched hands of the fielder. The contest was probably sealed by then as 19 had come off the 18th over bowled by Faulkner. Sixteen in the penultimate over left only four to be made in the 20th over, which Dhoni, the great finisher of the short game, finished off in a hurry, putting the Australian pacers out of their misery.
It is unusual for Kohli to hit more than one six even in a T20 innings, but both sixes were not clubbed with a big swinging bat as much as a willow wielded in the greatest style, coaxing the ball into spaces which were no man's land, the timing so good it carried beyond the strokes beyond the ropes. Kohli could have been stopped on such a day only if a fielding team were allowed 20 men on the field besides the bowler and wicket-keeper.
For sheer geometrical genius, this was one innings which will be spoken of for a long time to come. Just hear what Steve Smith had to say about it. This was wristy artistry at its finest coupled with those excellently timed drives through cover and point.
