Kohliesque

I’ll start off with the disclaimer that I've never written about cricket. I'm a self-proclaimed fan of the game, and I've been ardently following it since the 96' World Cup. I write for my daily bread but never have I indulged in putting down words about this beloved Indian pastime. I use pastime lightly because for Indians, at least most of us, calling cricket anything other than religion is the quickest way to test our adherence to non-violence.

I've seen the highs and lows of Indian cricket over close to three decades of watching the game. Writing about what someone did on the field, to me, came across as self-aggrandizing. It was like telling the reader, "Hey, here's the transcript of the game you saw on TV, written down by me because I obviously have better language and game awareness than you." But this one time, I figured that I'd lock that voice in a room and throw away the key. Because if there's a time to write about it, then it has to be when Virat Kohli was in full war cry against Pakistan. I'm, of course, referring to the opener for the T20 WC2022 event.

Let's go.

When adjectives fail

Everyone uses adjectives. Great, terrible, enormous, fast, beautiful - it adds so much more to what we're trying to say. Being someone who writes for a living, I meet them every day at my keyboard. A good part of my time is spent on deciding which of them make it on my proverbial Final_final2.0_REALLYFINAL word document. So, it's safe to assume that I'm pretty familiar with this demographic of words.

Adjectives are what make anything readable and watchable. It elevates, magnifies, and contextualizes. So, you'd think that anything worthwhile requires adjectives to be consumable, right? Well, yes and no. I'll explain the "no" since the "yes" is pretty self-explanatory.

While it is true that we need adjectives there are times when they can be futile, useless, pointless, and irritating, like those ultra-cringy Aliya Bhatt ads we are forced to sit through at the end of every over. The concept of adjectives, as powerful as they are, breaks down during certain events of unimaginable scale. The closest parallel I can draw here is a black hole.

Having extensive experience with cosmic phenomena (watching Interstellar four times), I've understood that the gravitational forces are so strong in black holes that the concept of time, space, and physics cease to exist. Much like reality evaporates inside a black hole, so too do adjectives dissipate in front of a V. Kohli innings.

Adjectives fail to describe what Kohli does on a cricket field.

Event horizon

India was chasing 160 runs to win the match. And then it begins. No, not the first ball of the chase. The actual event that close to a billion people were waiting for, allegedly, of course, is when the first wicket falls in a star-studded Indian batting lineup. The fans fall silent in the stadium for a quick second. Half a second spent in disappointment for the batsman who fell, the other half in anticipation for what's to come. And then, the stadium launches into a pure, unbridled roar as it catches a glimpse of the One8 on the back of the batsman coming in next.

Kohli strides to the crease as only he can and does. How a batsman gets to the crease is when you get a glimpse into their mind. No one since Sir Vivian Richards, one of the most bombastic batsmen with a swagger worth a million bucks, has anyone looked as good as they did walking out to the square. Is it coincidence that Sir Viv saw himself in Kohli? Remember, we're talking about a man who pulled and hooked quicks wearing a felt maroon cap for protection. I think he could see pretty well.

Kohli might have been a mere mortal for the last 3 cricketing years, but there was no mistaking the confidence in his canter to the middle. It was defiant, purposeful, even regal. The batsman started slowly, picking up 1s, 2s, and the occasional 3s as wickets tumbled on the other side. And to be honest, I was just hoping for him to get back into his groove; there was a long way to go in the tournament. It looked like one of those safe innings which probably wouldn't win us a match, but we'd be happy with a 50 or more.

15 off 24, need 99 off 69

But then, with one shot, the batsman reminded us of three things - we were in Australia, we were playing against Pakistan, and he was Kohli. Like a cat skipping into a group of pigeons, he popped down the wicket, a flash of the scarlet MRF emblazoned blade in a perfect arc through the line of the ball, and the ball fell into a pair of hands in the straight stands. That shot had beauty and authority in equal, titrated measure. In an era dominated by 360s, heavy hands, and heavier bats, this shot was sipping the head off your favorite beer on a hot Sunday afternoon - effortless, crisp, and immensely satisfying.

And from then on, this Kohli innings took on a richer hue. A delectable flick off a left-arm quick that teased the fielder, a cut off a spinner garnished with a flourish of the bat, and a huge wallop of a pull shot off a short ball that fell centimeters short of the ropes. If this were a Michelin-star restaurant, I'd already be looking like Bibendum. But no, the King Kohli Blitz Ritz had more.

52 off 44, need 48 off 18

A pull here, a one-handed drive there, shots began to flow from his bat. As an Indian fan who already had a heavy Sunday lunch, I was not sure I'd have any more room in my gut. Ninety thousand vociferous voices ripped through the calm of the Australian night sky with their chants. "Ko-hli! Ko-hli! Ko-hli!" The whole stadium reverberated under the sheer weight of sound. People kilometers away could hear the party. Commentators exclaim they can't hear themselves think.

The task at hand was still close to impossible. The Pakistan team and captain looked visibly perturbed. If there were a word cloud of all the interrogatories in Barbar's head, the one that would stand out would be "how." How was India, which had a winning probability of 9% a few overs ago, still in the game? How can we still win this game? How is this because of just one man?

61 off 47, need 28 off 8

Over 18.4 - at this point, if you were like me, you'd think these are the last few heroics before a losing battle, right? And if you were like me, you'd be so terribly wrong. Rauf is one of the quicker bowlers Pakistan has produced, and he was having a good day today. His last three overs went for paltry. We just didn't get a hold of him throughout this match. Pace, line, length, and verve, the man brought it all with him tonight against us. He made the best batting lineup in world cricket look like an average village cricket team. The first four balls from him confirmed the same, and it didn't go for many. But then…

The shot

It came like a deafening thundercrack that split the sky. A shot so ostentatious but executed with the stamp of typical Kohli panache. The entire stadium didn't believe it happened for a time-bending microcosm. The pause in breath was palpable in the stadium and across transmission mediums. The ball was dug into the pitch - it was slower and had horizontal revs on it. It was basically a 130-ish, short, off-spinner to the body. Cricket physics, as we've known it, deemed that the ball could go anywhere off the bat but straight. The backlift was straight. The bat came straight. The ball went straight. If someone chose to turn water into wine at the MCG that night, it'd be pretty safe to say we'd have missed the third coming. And what's more, he walks off to the side after the shot. At that moment, I don't think even he knew what he'd done.

Everyone's at the edge of their sanity at this point. Screaming. Runner. Captain. Crowd. Me. My WhatsApp group. Everyone. And then came the icing - the slickest of flicks into the crowd. The bat flitted through the air quicker than my friend from Gobichettipalayam picked up "Y'all" on his two-week B1B2 vacation in Texas. I thought the stadium couldn't get louder, and not for the first time since this match started. I was wrong again. After a few more dramatic moments, we went on to win the match by the closest of margins.

Aftermath

We had won. People have seen him carry all the different shades of emotions throughout his career. But this time, it was different. The sheer weight of emotion he had been carrying for the last one thousand days squeezed out a single tear from the great man. The crowd shed tears of joy and relief in equal measure. I felt my throat tighten, and coincidentally, someone was chopping onions in my bedroom. The King we thought we had lost had returned.

The game was important, sure, but in hindsight, at least for me, this Kohli spectacle is the crowning jewel of this world cup. To say this was one of the best innings this format of the game has witnessed needs no explanation or ambivalence. It was simply an exhibition of his own perfection of the art of batsmanship, which we thought was lost to the annals of time. The flame rekindled, brighter. The furnace bellowed, louder.

Adjectives fail to describe what Kohli did on the cricket field. What else can we call it rather than an innings of Kohliesque proportions?