With an innings of unshackled brilliance Kohli ends century drought in Asia Cup
There was a moment of suspenseful silence. A moment when all the eyes in the stadium were tracking a white ball’s path. Then as the ball landed onto the scantly-filled gallery behind the midwicket fence, the stadium let out a collective roar of joy so loud that it could stop traffic at the bustling Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road. Then the collective converged onto the five-foot-eleven sleek figure of Virat Kolhi, standing in the middle of the ground, statue-like, immersed in a transcendental dream. He woke up from the trance of his 71st hundred — a hundred after 1020 days, his longest ever wait — kissed the wedding ring tied onto the chain on his neck, one for his wife and daughter flashed a hearty smile, removed his helmet and applauded the crowd in every stand. Not like a man liberated or unburdened but a man contented and satisfied, at peace with himself.
The celebrations were quiet and graceful, a far cry from his peak, when he used to hit centuries for fun. No punchy blows in the air, no leaps and growls, no emotional excesses, no rage or anger, but a restrained show of emotions from a matured cricketer. Later, in the mid-innings chat with the host broadcasters, he said: “Last two and a half years have taught me a lot. I am going to turn 34 in a month. So those angry celebrations are a thing of the past.”
The wait for the hundred, though, seemed eternal and had spiralled into a national obsession, the frenzy matched only by the wait for Sachin Tendulkar’s hundredth hundred. Like Tendulkar, who achieved the landmark in a nondescript Asia Cup match at Dhaka, Kolhi’s arrived in an inconsequential Asia Cup encounter against Afghanistan.
Both teams had already crashed out of the team, and the match would have been forgotten before it was over. But Kohli has injected context, consequence and archival value into a game that would have been of only academic value. The few thousands assembled here — the stadium was scantly-filled — would return with a treasured memory that they would savour for a lifetime, a scrap of memory that will remain fresh in their mind, and would be passed onto generations, as a legacy or heirloom, with obvious flourishes and exaggeration in the narration.
No one would remember the result (India won by a landslide 101 runs) or any other detail of the match (like Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s impeccable 5/4), or the physical drain and emotional fatigue of Afghanistan players, but the Kohli hundred. Only the Kohli hundred Not just any other. His 71st. After 1020 days. The whole cricketing world had waited the wait for Kolhi’s hundred.
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No one would remember the result (India won by a landslide 101 runs) or any other detail of the match (like Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s impeccable 5/4), or the physical drain and emotional fatigue of Afghanistan players, but the Kohli hundred. Only the Kohli hundred Not just any other. His 71st. After 1020 days. The whole cricketing world had waited the wait for Kolhi’s hundred.
