A second home Down Under

Australia is where Kohli plays his best percentage cricket reinforced by an insane amount of singles and twos

MELBOURNE: Virat Kohli is batting on 48. Not quite out of the woods, India need him to anchor the innings as long as possible. The right-hander is already in a different zone, sizing up the field, mentally dissecting the spaces, and calculating the risk before deciding to go for it. It’s the 17th over, time for either low full tosses or wide yorkers.

Shoriful Islam arrows in a wide full toss that Kohli reaches out to dab past cover. It should be a comfortable one. But Kohli hustles and converts it into a two. He has been run out only six times in T20Is. No one, arguably, assesses risks better than him. Moreover, this is Adelaide, where he had hit hundreds in both innings during the 2014-15 tour.

“As soon as I knew the World Cup was in Australia, I was grinning from ear to ear,” Kohli said after being given the Man of the Match award for his 64 against Bangladesh.

“I knew good cricketing shots would be the key. I knew the kind of experience and game awareness of having played in Australia will come in handy for the team. I absolutely love playing in this ground (Adelaide). Right from the nets at the back, as soon as I enter, it makes me feel at home. That knock at MCG was meant to be, but when I come here, it’s like I’m meant to come to Adelaide and enjoy my batting.”

‘The Aussie in him’

When the late Dean Jones had described Kohli as “almost more Australian than he is Indian,” he was not just talking about his temperament. There is always a provocative insinuation that Kohli is easily the most loved as well as hated person in Australia because he pays them back in the same coin. There was the cold, raging stare. He has gesticulated and engaged in verbal volleys with multiple players. But what really seems to get their goat is the fact that Kohli is someone who plays exactly like them.

Many of the finest batters in the world have gone to Australia and forgotten how to score. Some couldn’t take the heat. Some couldn’t stand up to the barracking and sledging. But every time Kohli has been in Australia, he has plundered runs in every format.

In Tests, he has scored 1352 runs in 13 matches at an average of 54.08, with six hundreds and four fifties. In ODIs, Kohli has to his name 1327 runs in 29 matches at an average of 51.03, with five hundreds and six fifties. T20Is saw him score 671 runs in 15 matches at a strike rate of 144.61, his best outside India.

He has now surpassed Sachin Tendulkar in scoring the most runs for an Indian in Australia, as well as becoming the all-time highest scorer in the T20 World Cup. These are seriously astounding numbers garnered over almost a decade. He has done it with proper cricketing shots and also by running like a machine.

Kohli is so versatile in his range that with every shot he plays, his aura not only takes on a sheen of invincibility but also acquires a sense of inevitability.

Hitting bad balls

Like when he swatflicked Haris Rauf off his backfoot for a six. A lot of batting in T20 is about not missing out on the bad ball. Even when he misses out, he tries to get the next best result—find a gap and push the non-striker to run for as many as possible. So when we are talking about the full range of Kohli’s batting, it can’t be limited only to the money shots. A massive part of it is the game awareness that fetches Kohli runs when the boundary balls aren’t coming. This is where Australia plays such an important role in Kohli’s graph. The bounce here is truer than other nations but the bigger outfields also proportionately influence Kohli’s scoring pattern.

Statistics indicate the same. Singles make for around a third of Kohli’s T20I runs everywhere.

Among Test-playing countries, only in England does Kohli have a lower percentage (27.08%) of runs scored in boundaries than in Australia (30.4%). But when it comes to twos, Kohli is most prolific in New Zealand (22.18%) and Australia (18.78%) where the boundaries can be longer than usual.

Hard running between the wickets

And only in Australia do threes make up for at least 1% (1.34% to be exact) of Kohli’s T20I runs. In a nutshell, Australia is where Kohli plays his best percentage cricket—a generous dose of fours and sixes, reinforced by an insane amount of running between the wickets.

It sounds easier than it is. A fifty in T20Is or a hundred in Tests isn’t required to recognise and appreciate the intent that has defined Kohli all his life. More admirable is the will to focus and refocus on the basics that help a batter break down a big target into smaller targets, day in and day out. Equally pleasing is that knack for an ever-expanding range of strokes.

In each innings, Kohli is seemingly playing more shots one hadn’t seen him try before. These are hallmarks of a truly complete batter whose foundation was carved right here in Australia. And now that he is united with his ‘home’ away from home, expect Kohli to exploit every bit of that advantage.