Helmet off, hands held aloft with the bat in one hand and the helmet in the other, beaming with a huge smile was Kohli who had just scored his 78th international hundred. India won the game against Bangladesh with a good 10 overs to go thereby maintaining their superior NRR. Till he reached his hundred, Kohli was in his usual best but the events that led to his hundred showed him in a poor light. Never before have I seen Kohli being so short of confidence in his ability. The Indian supporters in general were displeased at the farce that they witnessed. I for one would have been happy if Kohli had remained not out in the 90s or even if he was out in the 90s but this came as a rude shock. What have you done Kohli?
The farce that played out itself in the last few overs of the game was hard to digest. Rahul and Kohli were at the crease with Kohli needing the same number of runs that was required to win the game. It would have been alright if Kohli had moved onto his hundred with a couple of big hits. He tried a few heaves but was unable to connect. The ball kept going to the outfield but the pair did not run. On the whole, the pair denied 5 singles which if they had been taken, would have meant India would have won an over earlier but Kohli may not have completed his hundred.
Even the umpire fell into this trap when he chose to ignore a delivery well down the leg. To make matters worse, the umpire was even caught smirking. It was clear from his expression that he was not amused by Kohli’s antics.
Rahul took the blame upon himself
“He [Kohli] was confused, he said it will not look too nice, not to take the single, it’s still a World Cup, and it’s still a big stage. ‘I don’t want to look like I am just trying to get the milestone’,” Rahul told Star Sports. “But I said, I mean it is not won but still I think we’ll win quite easily, so if you can get to the milestone why not, you must try. And he did that in the end. I wasn’t going to run the singles anyway.”
It hardly matters who denied the singles. The fact is that it was ugly to watch on the screen. Rahul may well have taken the blame on himself but what stopped Kohli from putting his foot down and telling Rahul that this was a serious international game and a World Cup at that. Let us not fool around and be done with the game. A hundred really does not matter in the bigger scheme of things. I mean, how hard can it be? Agreed, that there were another 10 overs to be bowled and a further 7 wickets remained but does it mean that a player’s individual milestone must take precedence over the bigger prize of winning a game? Certainly not. What transpired on the evening of 19th October was abysmal.
The younger generation
I am worried about the children who watched the game last night. They will think that it is alright to play for personal records rather than for the team. India for long has been besotted with this problem. Players playing for records rather than for the greater cause. It all started with Gavaskar when he broke Garry Sobers’s record for the most international Test hundreds, continued with Kapil Dev’s highest number of wickets and reached a crescendo when Tendulkar started to break records regularly. As a result, Indians are much more worried about their favourites scoring hundreds rather than the result of the game itself.
How can anyone forget Tendulkar’s hundredth 100? He took his own sweet time to get to the landmark that India fell way short of the par score. The small matter of India losing that game did not register with the Indians. This is the problem with us. It is time we come out of this web of individual milestones and records and concentrate on team records.
I can only hope that Dravid, the man famous for declaring the innings when Tendulkar was batting on 194, will not take kindly to what he witnessed. Hopefully, he would be strong with the likes of Kohli and Rahul for such poor ethics.
Wrapping up what have you done Kohli?
I just wish for the days of Virender Sehwag who never ever cared about any personal milestone. I can still remember him going for a 6 while he was batting on 294. He would have become the first batsman to score 3 triple hundreds in the modern era. What did he do? He did not bat with circumspection. For him, if a ball is there to be hit, he will hit. It does not matter whether he was in the 90s or 190s or 290s or even 390s. Such batsmen are so rare to find. It really is a shame he didn’t end his career with an average in excess of 50 because that was how good he was.
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