Cuts and Glances: Virat Kohli puts the cricket into T20

Virat Kohli bats during the Twenty20 2016 cricket match against Australia.

Gideon Haigh will be blogging throughout the cricket season.

They are starting to compare Virat Kohli to Sachin Tendulkar, even to deem him theLittle Master’s superior.

It sounds like lèse-majesté until you watch him bat as last night in Mohali, where he made an awkward chase look simplicity itself in sending Australia home from the World T20. In fifteen successful T20I chases, Kohli now averages 122.8. But it is more than that. Tendulkar was first among equals in his gifted batting order; take Kohli out of this Indian team, and it’s a hit-and-miss affair at best. Their average table in this tournament looks like something out of under-12s.

When the game was to be won in overs 18 and 19, Kohli was able to access every quadrant of the field, ahead of Steve Smith at every step. Adam Zampa would have been the bold choice at this stage; you sensed that Kohli was glad to feel the amiable pace of James Faulkner and Nathan Coulter-Nile on his battering bat. Not a stroke, by the way, would have looked out of place in a Test match. Much as the marketers would like to take the cricket out of T20, Kohli keeps putting it back.

In truth, after surging to 53 from their first four overs, Australia had not done quite enough in their turn at the crease. Not for the first time in the last few weeks, an innings was constipated by an infusion of spin: there were a score of dot balls and a solitary boundary between overs five and 12, in and around the wickets of the captain and vice-captain. There’s a sense in which Australia in this tournament never quite unglued the gridlock of their top order. For all the rightful acclaim of the manFairfax calls ‘Umsan Khawaja’, he has not made the best of a sizeable opportunity in India, using up the best batting conditions with a string of flamboyant cameos. Worse, the displaced David Warner has looked lost, stumped last night in playing defensively — there are some conglomerated thoughts right there. If not for Peter Nevill’s interdiction at the end, Australia’s total would have been feeble rather than merely inadequate.

On any other night, Afghanistan’s making good of this prophecy would have been atournament stopper, although the West Indies’s defeat is a good deal less of a shock than their succumbing to Kenya twenty years ago: they are as dependent on Chris Gayle as India on Kohli.

It was a delicious game, Afghanistan producing their usual flashes of mercurial brilliance, from Rashid Khan hoodwinking Samuels with a googly to Shahzad’s direct hit run out of Andre Russell. But perhaps even more impressive was the coolness of their cricket as destiny neared. In the last two overs, Samiullah Shenwari and Najibullah Zadran never looked like dropping Darren Sammy and Carlos Brathwaite respectively. Though they finished bottom of their group, Afghanistan return home having had a better World T20 than Australia.