Kohli - A Genius ?

Not much of cricket following from me these days, but since it is a World Cup I’m watching few India matches. Let me cut straight to the point, Virat Kohli 82* is one of the best T20 innings which I had seen recent times. It was not big hit slogging, but with precision placements.

Sunil Gavaskar in his commentary said “Kohli is a genius”, when something like this word of praise come from Gavaskar, then he must mean it for sure and we got to agree. It is as if Kohli freezes the fielders in his mind and when he is about to hit the ball, his mind passes the message to his hands\wrist to turn the bat to the appropriate position to place the ball into the field. The rest is taken care by the dynamics of physics.

Most batsmen are good at pads, so is he, nothing special, leg side is favorite pick for most batsmen. But he doesn’t slog on on-side. He gently strokes the ball to deep mid-wicket, the ball passes either right or left of mid-wicket fielder. By the time the deep mid-wicket fielder fields and returns it Kohli might have stolen 2 runs. He was struggling with Yuvaraj to take the 2nd run, but when Dhoni came the 2’s were on the cards.

Now boundaries- This is where the magic happens. In 15th over he scored a boundary. It was a short of length ball from Hazelwood. Most batsmen would have pulled it for deep mid-wicket, but Kohli stretched his front foot and in an upright position (as if he is going to aim for mid-wicket) uses his wrists to place the ball between longon and deep midwicket, by bisecting both the fielders. FOUR

The other two 4’s came in 17th over by Faulkner and 18th over by Coulter-Nile. Both similar line and length- just outside the off-stump & in between Yorker-half volley. He opens the face of the bat with turning wrists, placing the ball in between point and cover fielder. As long as the sweeper is not squarer (which is not possible) that is FOUR.

He has played similar innings before and he is going to play in future. Please don’t compare with Sachin. Kohli still has the longevity test, which Sachin never failed in any calendar or never been out-of-form.

Guardian puts this Kohli innings like this ….DRINK IN THE GENIUS! CRAM IT IN YOUR EYES, BURN IT ON YOUR BRAIN!..