49 centuries old
Rohit Mahajan
Kolkata, November 5
If madness is your method, Kolkata should be your city. Virat Kohli couldn’t have timed his 49th century better — though critics would say that he could have been quicker to 100 today — for he got it in the right place at the right time: Kolkata, November 5, his 35th birthday.
Forty-nine is no milestone to any mathematically-minded person, but it does become a milestone if Sachin Tendulkar sits on this number — the most ODI centuries ever.
Kolkata willed Kohli to his century. The fans marched to the Eden Gardens with Kohli shirts on, with Kohli masks on, chanting ‘Happy Birthday Kohli’, bearing gifts of cakes, both edible and cardboard. They kept up the chants of ‘Kohli, Kohli’ almost during the entirety of his knock; they greeted his boundaries as if greeting a Kolkatan for winning the Nobel Prize for literature; they cheered his doubles and dives as if he were Sourav Ganguly himself reaching his 100.
Kohli didn’t disappoint them, playing a chanceless innings; if the fans were unhappy with the relative sluggishness of his knock, especially after a start of 62 in 5.5 overs by Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill, they didn’t show it.
What a day to equal the great man’s record of most ODI 100’s. His birthday at the historic Eden Gardens. Take a bow, #ViratKohli — Virender Sehwag
This is the Best birthday gift from @imVkohli to the fans of team India & entire cricket fraternity. HBD !!! — Shahid Afridi
Kohli came in to bat in the sixth over and was there right until the end of the innings; he started quickly enough, driving the fourth ball he faced, from Kagiso Rabada, for four; when the gangling left-arm paceman Marco Jansen bowled one at his pads, Kohli sent the ball to the boundary behind square leg. He then sent the fans into delirium with two fours off two balls from Rabada in the 10th over, driving on both sides of the wicket.
After 10 overs, India had got to 91/1, Kohli on 18 off 14.
The innings, and Kohli, suffered a slowdown due to two factors — the excellent Keshav Maharaj came in to bowl the 11th and removed Gill with a wonderful ball: angled in from around the stumps, it pitched on leg and beat Gill’s bat as he tried to turn it for a single, and clipped the top of off.
Maharaj bowled 10 overs on the trot and stifled Kohli and No. 4 Shreyas Iyer. Kohli later said that the wicket became sluggish, and the lack of pace, plus excellent line and turn by Maharaj, led to a steady fall in the scoring rate.
When Maharaj was done, with 1/30 off 10 overs and without conceding a boundary, India were 170/2 in 29 overs, and run-rate had fallen to 5.86, Iyer had 39 off 57 balls, Kohli 53 off 69. Between the 10th and 32nd overs, Kohli struck only one four. South Africa’s second left-arm spinner, wrist-spinner Tabraiz Shamzi, proved to be difficult to get away, too, as bowling from over the stumps, he targeted a leg-stump line, turning the ball out; this meant that he conceded a lot of extras through wides, but by bowling his first five overs for only 34 runs, he helped South Africa control the flow of the runs.
Kohli had four fours in the first 14 balls he faced; in the next 64, he added only one more; off the final 45 balls he faced, Kohli hit six fours, though at the other end the likes of Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja went berserk.
During the mid-innings break, Kohli explained the sluggishness of the wicket. “It was a wicket that was tricky to bat on. We got a great start. My job was to keep the momentum going when I got in. But after 10 overs, the ball started gripping and the wicket started slowing down. My role was to bat deep and till the end after the openers fell because that’s what I’ve done, that was the communication as well — to have guys bat around me,” he said.
