Kohli takes a leaf out of Tendulkar's book to construct monumental 186

There were no elaborate celebrations – no exaggerated leap in the air, no spewing of a string of expletives, no bat-point and gesticulating, no punching the air violently with his fist. Virat Kohli was composed, almost relieved, when he completed his 75th international century, and his first Test hundred in 1,026 days, on Sunday (March 12).

Composure. That was the hallmark of Kohli’s monumental 186 at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, where India will chase a last-day victory on Monday to secure qualification to the final of World Test Championship (WTC). If, on a still-docile surface, India is in with a shout of forcing a result, much of the credit for that should be laid at the doorstep of the former captain, the mastermind of an 800-minute batting effort from the host that allowed it to open up a lead of 91 despite Australia posting 480 in its first innings.

Podcast: Dissecting Virat Kohli’s 186

Given cricket’s pre-eminence as a numbers game, it is inevitable that even the greats, Kohli among them, will be judged by a numerical yardstick. That hadn’t been kind to him for three years and four months prior to Sunday. Since his magnificent 136 against Bangladesh in Kolkata in a day-night Test in November 2019, Kohli’s cricketing stocks had taken a dramatic nosedive. A slump in form coincided with, and was exacerbated by, the loss of captaincy across formats, two voluntarily and the other without choice, and the one-time colossus appeared a pale shadow of his imperious former self.

Also read: Virat Kohli ‘played through sickness’ to score 186: Anushka Sharma

Kohli’s poor returns since 2020

Even conceding that centuries should not necessarily be the only yardstick, it was hard to reconcile to Kohli’s returns of 1,028 runs from 23 Tests since the beginning of 2020. An average of 25.70 across this extended period is a poor reflection on any batsman; when that individual answers to the name of Virat Kohli, they are magnified even more, because like other champions, Kohli is often a victim of his own brilliance.

Kohli needed his 28th Test hundred as much as India did. For the team, it was imperative that someone, anyone, bed in for the long haul, because 480 even on a flat deck is a massive total to be confronted with. For Kohli, a return to a pitch that didn’t assist spin from the off was just the dream scenario he would have hoped for so that he could translate recent white-ball excellence to the five-day game too.

Kohli had gone 1,020 days without a century for India until he ended the drought in Dubai in September, with his only T20I ton to date against Afghanistan at the Asia Cup. As happens in such instances, one led to many – he stacked up three ODI hundreds in the space of a month and a half in December-January but around these limited-overs heroics, his Test form remained middling to poor.

Also read: Virat Kohli ‘shocked’ after scoring T20I ton

On spin-friendly pitches this series, Kohli looked as solid as anyone – Rohit Sharma and Axar Patel excepted – without going on to bigger things, so it was imperative that he not look the Ahmedabad gift horse in the mouth. That he did not is credit to his hunger and determination, to the oodles of professional pride that reside in that lithe frame and that must have been terribly hurt at not making a meaningful contribution to the team’s cause.

By nature, if not instinct, Kohli is an attacking batsman. He hates letting the game drift, his intent is always to take it and then keep moving it forward. But in Ahmedabad, the conditions conspired to rob him of that luxury. Here, he had to be patient and willing to grind; he had to set his ego aside and respect the fact that he couldn’t go out and play his strokes freely. He had to defer to the reality that runs had to be eked out, like water from a stone, that there would be no glorious cascade of boundaries but a trickle of ones and twos that had to be accepted.

Emulating Tendulkar

So Kohli set out to do all that. He also embarked on another mission – to take a leaf out of the Sachin Tendulkar playbook.

In Australia in 2003-04, after a series of failures, Tendulkar went into the Sydney Test determined not to tempt fate by taking the off-side out of the equation. His reward was a supreme 241 not out, then his highest score, an effort notable for the strokes he did not play. Kohli emulated the great man with a pronounced penchant for on-side play for the first half, when he took balls from off and wristed them to the leg-side because the pitch allowed him to do so.

Since the pitch didn’t facilitate a bouquet of fours, Kohli opted to do what he also does best – work the gaps and run between the wickets like the wind. His 100 came off 241 deliveries and contained only five fours – essentially, he had run 80% of those runs in tremendous heat, challenging and often besting men much younger than his wizened 34 years.

Also read: Kohli 2.0: Decoding the batter’s century No. 71 and the sheer joy it brings

Towards the second half of his innings of two parts, he effortlessly shifted gears to have a holiday crowd eating out of his hands. The straight drive made a telling reappearance, as did the whippy wristwork that sent the ball speeding to the mid-wicket fence. 100 to 186 took just 123 deliveries and contained 10 fours. It was Kohli at his vintage best, as if the three years between hundreds was the figment of mischievous imagination rather than the harsh reality that was weighing him down.

By the time he was the last man out, caught on the boundary trying to get quick runs, he had batted for 511 minutes – that’s more than eight and a half hours – without losing focus, concentration or sight of the ultimate goal. He walked off to warm applause from the spectators and with his reputation restored, his pedigree as the alpha dog no longer under threat. Usually, such efforts are the trigger to greater things. With the WTC final looming in June – assuming India gets there – and the 50-over World Cup to be staged in our country later in the year, 2023 could turn out to be the year of Kohli, again. Now, isn’t that a thought?

Also read: Mentally down, did not touch bat for a month, says Virat Kohli