Virat Kohli On Diwali '22 - Touched By The Gods

Well before *that* six, he knew

When did you know?

You know what I’m talking about. A contest, an athlete, an exhibition for the ages. Held at one of cricket’s great venues. Ninety thousand live attendees. Half in blue, half in green. Who said this was Australia? I digress. When did you know that we are in the midst of a special inning? That, to quote a famous cliche in sports, the game was on? That Kohli was feelin’ it?

We’ll come to the sixes. We must first talk about Virat Kohli in the months and year before this tournament. Cast your mind back one full year. India vs Pakistan in a T20 World Cup; the ring of lights in Dubai; Shaheen Shah Afridi tearing through India’s top order. We remember how that match started and ended. Sandwiched within it was a tiny Kohli inning that briefly felt like a soaring counterattack but ended as a laborious jog. He hit a six off Shaheen that, I promise you, was as watchable and loopable as the one against Haris Rauf from last night. But when the spinners came, Kohli couldn’t manouver them. India had lost early wickets, but he wasn’t able to push the innings either.

In the last eighteen months, as Kohli’s initial struggle with big scores turned into a full-fledged fissure between bat and brain, he was still capable of genius. There was one Test knock on a minefield against England that was better than many hundreds; another against Rabada and co. at Cape Town, where most others couldn’t put bat to ball. Some runs in white-ball cricket too. And most Kohli knocks have at least a couple of shots that make you stand up from your chair and gasp. But he was failing too. A bit too often. The memorable shots hinted at something great but couldn’t manifest into big scores. One felt he was on the cusp of recovering form but just couldn’t barge himself back in.

That ability, to barge into things, has been Kohli’s biggest tell. When the chest is pumped, when he prowls onto the pitch, Kohli is feelin’ it. Over the last many months, he has been tip-toeing himself back into rhythm. You can’t really blame him. For batters with statistical records like his, it must feel like an insect crawling under your skin to not find enough solid, mundane runs. His confidence was visibly short. Pushing and prodding and heaving. This wasn’t him.

Last night was peak Virat Kohli. Forget Mach2; this was as Mach1 as it can get. But we know this after the sixes off Haris Rauf and that last over. It’s easy to take out the measuring tape after the game is over. That first six off Rauf is when we felt the adrenalin hit, maybe. We knew then. But when did he know?

On 1st March 2003, India played Pakistan in a tense World Cup match in Centurion, South Africa. Pakistan batted first and scored 273. Given the bowling attack they had -- Wasim, Waqar, Shoaib, Razzaq, Afridi -- you expected them to defend this. Out strode Sehwag and Tendulkar. Both like to tell the story of Tendulkar telling his partner, “I’m feeling good. Let me take strike against Akram.” Cut to: a cover-driven four in the first over that makes the hair on your arms stand up. By the time he hit Shoaib for that six, Sachin knew. He knew when he walked out, and the four off Akram was just validation. Similarly, Aravinda de Silva knew, at 1/2 in a World Cup semi-final against India at a packed Eden Gardens, that he was smelling something special. Genius is weird that way. 

I don’t really know what feeling or smelling means. As you can probably guess, I am closer to the polar opposite of genius.

Having watched a lot of Kohli, I would wager that he felt special when he cut Shadab for four and took a bunch of twos off his bowling. The placement was near perfect, and that has always been Kohli’s thing. Sure, the fours and sixes, the shots that sound like expletives and firecrackers, light up his batting. But working the field and making bowlers bowl where he wants makes him come alive. It’s what makes him Virat Kohli. During that partnership with Pandya, Kohli was doing his thing. There was a yorker from Naseem Shah that should’ve been a two at best. He middled that to the fine-leg boundary. 

We didn’t really know then, but he did. When you watch back the highlights, you can see Kohli feeling it. And I guess that’s the difference between ordinary and genius. We need a highlights reel to show us what they see in real-time.

I don’t know if Kohli is “back” or if this was a deviation, however incandescent. But my god, this was something. And as Prem Panicker said in a WhatsApp group I’m part of -- casual namedropping, because why not -- this was an innings indeed touched by the gods.