MATCH STORIES
Follow UsThere were four sixes. Neatly struck. One better than the other.
First - a slower ball from Mitchell Starc on the off-stump, Virat Kohli gets into the position and flicks it over square leg for a six.
A while later, against Sunil Narine of all people, Kohli sweeps it over deep mid-wicket. Clean as it gets.
Then, a length ball on the leg stump from Varun Chakaravarthy. Kohli decides to go forward and send it over deep mid-wicket for a maximum. Then, another one over deep mid-wicket to cap it off.
In between, however, were a slew of mishits and a tampered-down approach against spin. Kohli ended up with 83 runs off 59 balls at a strike rate of 140.68.
It was not a wicket where you could break free immediately, as the freshness of the pitch was holding it up from both ends. There was no dew to deal with either - so the Kolkata Knight Riders spinners put a strong chokehold in the middle overs. That somehow explained why the former RCB skipper batted with a strike rate of 105 between the 7th and 15th over compared to his SR of 200 in the first six overs and 144 in the last five. It was simply not easy to clear the ropes.
RCB’s batting construct allows them to play that way. With Faf du Plessis, Cameron Green, and Glenn Maxwell to bat around him, Kohli has the flexibility to do what he does best. Anchoring his way around the innings while maintaining a strike rate close to 150. A deviation from that plan may not be in the best interest of the side. And the last two games were a definitive answer to that.
Both the games had a distinctly similar surface dished out, and spinners in both games had a sway over their pace counterparts. Harpreet Brar didn’t give anything away on Monday. Neither did Anukul Roy in his two overs. Sunil Narine brilliantly snapped back his figures after a 15-run first over, and that told the story of the night. Navigating through that and still managing to keep control over the innings to guide Royal Challengers Bengaluru to 182 demonstrated why Kohli is so crucial to the plans.
To be honest, this’s not a new thing for Kohli. He has done the same innumerable times in his career - both for RCB and India. He has soaked in the resultant pressure comfortably well to keep the side better placed, but the evolution of T20 cricket, particularly in the last decade, has rendered many anchors ineffective.
The introduction of the Impact player rule has somehow pushed that role further down, with Stephen Fleming recently explaining how anything other than a six from Shivam Dube’s bat is a mishit. Teams train for particular situations - hence, the role of anchors is largely ceremonial. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth when it comes to accommodating someone like Kohli.
There has been so much discussion around the place of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma in India’s T20 World Cup ambitions - properly logical even. But as the last two games suggested, “Kohli still got it.” And that’s not just to promote the sport in the hinterlands, but to give a solid crack and still come out triumph.
