Published: Nov 06, 2013, 09:23 AM (IST)
Edited: Nov 06, 2013, 09:23 AM (IST)
Virat Kohli was the third highest run getter in the recently concluded ODI series against Australia. He scored 344 runs from five innings © Getty Images
By Venkataraman Ganesan
To quote Jorge Luis Borges: “We accept reality so readily — perhaps because we sense that nothing is real”.
The incontrovertible reality is that Virat Kohli is in the form of his life. The accompanying irrefutable truth, nay a lockstep as would be agreed to by even the most sybaritic of his admirers is that such form is perfectly unreal.
The feisty right-hander, of late, as amply evidenced in the recently concluded run-frenzied One-Day International (ODI) series against Australia, seems to have expanded the firmament of his belligerent batting by adding an element of predictability that is almost Laplacian in its construct and devastating in its conduct. A predictability that has plunder for a heart, and punishment in place of the soul. Possessing a belief that is untrammeled and an attitude not influenced by any sequestration, his sole point of focus has been a remorseless obfuscation of the meticulously laid plans of every hapless bowler who has had the misfortune of plying his wares against this marauder.
As glorious strokes flow from his pitiless willow, the opponents are reduced to a bunch of wearied, weather worn and wilting travelers straight out of a gloomy and unsettling book by WG Sebald. They make a vain, albeit futile attempt to reconcile themselves to the trauma inflicted upon them by an impetuous 24 year old. Even the most seemingly insurmountable of run chase is accomplished by a determination which could only be determined as Faustian in nature. Pace, swing, bounce and spin are treated with equal equanimity and impartial disdain. The philosophy underlying the persona is one that is unbelievably simple and unwaveringly fundamental — the bad deliveries need to be put away while the good deliveries ought to be necessarily dispatched.
With a simmering temperament almost bordering on the louche (especially when he gets to a century and by consequence more frequently), and a quiver of cricketing strokes which can only be termed seraphic, Kohli alternates between the ridiculous and the riveting. Either way he assails the bowlers unceasingly like a nagging wraith resolute in its atavistic determination. If statistics do not lie, then Virat Kohli —for the time being at least — is the ultimate truth. Suffused with a confidence unimaginable in its power and gifted with a talent extraordinary in its breadth, Kohli has redefined himself as the Master of the short version of the game. Not that his Test match averages are diminishing in comparison. However when it comes to the cropped version of the game, he is a bowler’s nemesis.
The enfant terrible of Indian cricket has now metamorphosed into Michelet’s joie de vivre. A typical Kohli innings that commences with flowing cover drives, courses through with rasping pulls and culminates in a cathartic number of cuts, flicks, smites, smacks, pumped fists and a raised bat, though superficially representing a barbaric assault on a bowling attack, is in reality a beautifully conceived, methodically executed and mesmerisingly completed dismantling of morale. There is an exquisiteness attached to the craft and sensuality to the sentencing. Kohli has indisputably staked his claim to be cricket’s most consummate executioner, although Hashim Amla might have a word or two to opine on this.
A perfectly well pitched up delivery is sent searing through the blades of grass with a high elbow and a perfectly still head; the flight and trajectory of a cunning spinner is detected immaculately and a deft sashay down the track results in a breathtaking inside out shot that sends the ball either crashing into the ropes or soaring beyond; a yorker length delivery is unassumingly flicked off the pads transforming a pair of mesmerised fielders into ball boys retrieving the ball back from the fence; a furious delivery pitched short in utter exasperation is left to rue the treatment that it warranted as a powerful horizontal bat stroke sends it pummeling into the second or third tier of the stands. As the impetuosity takes shape, grows and then finally dominates, the delirious fans and the perplexed neutrals alike take on the collective form of Dickens’ ‘Oliver’, as after having devoured the rapturous delights bestowed upon them, they shamelessly begin to hanker for more.
As is the dictates of the insidious law of averages, the unreal will at some point in time become feeble and reality would set in. As and when that happens the prevailing reality would swap clothes and conspiratorially don the mantle of the unreal. But as Chuck Prince of Citibank once famously remarked “as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance”. The music now is at the pinnacle of its melody. And dance they will; dance in the magnificent Tony Greig’s aisles, in a multitude of living rooms; in the teeming confines of glitzy pubs and in the crowded streets in front of a plasma television screen inside an electronic showroom.
Meanwhile Kohli with a magisterial twirl of his bat, looks around with roving eyes with a sparkling twinkle in them at the fielders scattered around him, lends a steely glare to a few inappropriate words being hurled at him from the slip cordon, hunches his back, bends down and intently focuses on the bowler all the while searchingly tapping his bat down the batting crease.
Borges also famously remarked, “image is sorcery”.
(Venkataraman Ganesan is a Chartered Accountant by intent and a lawyer by accident. He has a maniacal penchant for books, more books, still more books and lot more books, when he is not watching cricket that is! He loves his Scotch and scribbles for fun. He blogs at www.the-venkyloquist.com)
