Haren
The full toss that consumed Virat Kohli in the first dig in Pune would hurt him, but when the momentary shock dissipates, the leg before the wicket in the second outing would haunt him more. Whereas the first instance was pure misjudgement, which occurs to the greatest batsmen in the greatest of times, the second reflected his fractionally waning reflexes. He might yet enjoy an autumnal bloom in his career, driven a sportsman he is, but he is not without alarms, reminiscent of Sachin Tendulkar in his sunset years.
Deconstruct the dismissal. Mitchell Santner released the ball from wide of the crease, from around the stumps. By the time it began to drop down from its loop, Kohli knew enough about its flight to feel he should press back and work it off his hips. On a less worn-out surface, he could have stretched forward and defended or whirled the ball on the onside. But the distrustful bounce prompted him to go backwards. The ball skidded off the surface and flew a trifle low, just as Santner had intended, as he would say a day after the game. But how many times have Kohli’s pliant arms wristed the ball away. In his prime, he used to pick such balls with a devilish whirr of the bottom hands to the fence. Or worst, at least found an edge onto his pads. He has deployed it a thousand times, gone unnoticed because of its usualness. It’s a stroke that seems to exist only when someone gets out playing it.
It’s when you perish playing your staple shots that batsmen become ridden with doubts. Especially when you haven’t the leverage of runs in your account—since his last Test hundred, against the West Indies last year, he has averaged only 32.63 in 12 innings. Those two hundreds, four innings between them, looks anomalous, like rare spells of showers during a famine.
So, Kohli might have been angered as much by the marginality of the decision as the betrayal of the stroke. It has not been a one-off in the past few months. Similarly in Bengaluru, he snicked a Glenn Phillip’s un-turner from around the stumps in the second innings, just when he was rediscovering his authority. In the first, he reacted late to the extra bounce and movement of Will O’Rourke. In all of these instances, he decoded the length early, but couldn’t respond fast enough to what the ball did afterwards.
Pune: India’s Virat Kohli being bowled by New Zealand’s Mitchell Santner on the second day of the second test cricket match between India and New Zealand, at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, in Pune, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (PTI Photo/Kunal Patil)
Even the greatest have not been immune to the vagaries of time. Tendulkar waded through a similar phase, burdened even more by the weight and wait for his hundredth hundred. He essayed gorgeous strokes, looked infallible and seemed primed to rack at least a dozen more hundreds. But then, he engineers a mistake from nowhere, when executing some of his favourite strokes. In his tours to England straight after the 2011 World Cup triumph and Australia, he looked imperious in most of his excursions in the middle, but then, inescapably, he got out, often to those balls that were once fodder to him. A ledger of nine half-centuries (four of those 80-plus scores) in his last 39 innings captures the story.
His spiritual heir Kohli, now 35, is traversing the same twilight phase as his master did, when he is past his prime, yet not fully undiminished, or reached a zone where he has become a burden for the team. There are still hundreds to be scored and battles to be won. It’s a stage of refusal, when a sportsman cannot reconcile with the reality that he is ageing. He still longs to contribute the way he once used to be, but cannot quite come to terms with the reality he doesn’t, and the stage is no longer his. Perhaps all it would take him is a hundred.
The stasis—after the mini-resurrection last year—could not have been timed worse. Just before a tour to Australia, where he has enjoyed some of his most golden hours as both captain and batsman, but where his minutest of vulnerabilities could be ripped apart. Like Tendulkar again. He scored a hundred in each of his first four tours, all kinds of pitches and against all kinds of bowlers, yet his favourite shores forsook him the last time he toured. This could be Kohli’s last too, and he wouldn’t want a country that had both admired and antagonised him to watch him struggle.
This could be Kohli’s last tour of Australia, and he wouldn’t want a country that had both admired and antagonised him to watch him struggle. (PTI Photo/Shailendra Bhojak)
But a toil it has been for Kohli, even after he ended his prolonged drought of centuries. The phase of struggle wouldn’t tarnish his legacy. He would remain as one of India’s finest batsmen and captain. He is one of the reasons tickets for Test matches sell; his presence, even when he doesn’t score runs, is compelling. None of this would bother him, but runs, hundreds, and his own strengths betraying him.
BOX OF Strange Kohli dismissals
Lbw Mitchell Santner (2nd innings, Pune): Nine out of ten times, he would have worked the ball for a single on the onside. But somehow, he missed it. The ball was not exceptionally quick for a spinner either—just 88.3 kph. But Kohli’s bat arrived a little late to drag the ball to safety.
c Tom Bludnell b Glenn Phillips (2nd innings, Bangalore): He was batting regally 70 off 101 balls, when he fended at a non-turning ball and managed a faint tickle to the keeper. The ball was totally devoid of sting, just that it was a little quicker (101 kph). But those are balls that would have barely bothered him.
b Shakib Al Hasaan (1st innings, Kanpur): He decided to slog-sweep. It’s not one of his percentage shots but has been utilising it effectively in the shorter version. The ball kept a shade low, but still it snuck through his swipe and crashed onto the stumps.
