T20’s Bradman

Virat Kohli

When Virat Kohli chopped a routine loosener from Dhawal Kulkarni onto the stumps in the first qualifier— getting out for his first duck after 51 innings — it was gentle re-affirmation that he was, after all, human. He too can stoop to the follies of normal batsmen. For, since the World T20 and through much of this IPL, he had seemed nearly flawless and faultless — almost superhuman. The body of runs he has racked up speaks for itself: 273 runs at an incredible average of 136.50 in five innings in the World Cup followed by an outlandishly unbelievable tally of 919 runs at 83.54 and a strike rate of 151.94, helping himself to four hundreds as well. In eight previous editions, the most a batsman had managed was 733.

En route to this remarkable feat, Kohli made a few grousers bite back their words too. When he notched his first hundred against Gujarat Lions, his team lost, and unreasonably they put it on his perceived inability to hit sixes. Kohli’s predisposition and reliance on singles and twos was mocked. There was an element of credibility in the contention, for he had cleared the ropes just once in the innings. But Kohli, as he often does, went about debunking the misconception of his six-hitting ineptitude so convincingly that his next three hundreds saw him hitting as many as 25.

The nature of the format, the constraints of time, only make Kohli’s achievement more special. At 919, with just a match more, Kohli can go full throttle for that stupendous 1,000-run mark. That would arguably make him the Bradman of the shortest form of the game.