Soon after rocketing the ball back to Lasith Malingas feet and towards the boundary ropes of the Bellerive Oval,Virat Kohli turned around and stared at his manic dressing room. As non-striker Suresh Raina leapt onto his back with glee,Kohli carried Indias most challenging burden in recent times. Not only had his whirlwind 133 caused a miracle at Hobart on Tuesday,but the pairs unbeaten 55-ball 120-run partnership also crucially injected life back into a pulseless Indian team in the tri-series. Playing in what was widely considered to be Indias last match of the triangular competition,M S Dhonis side were in need of nothing less than a bonus point victory to keep their chances of qualifying for the finals alive. For that,the team needed to chase down Sri Lankas target in 40 overs. After Dhoni won the toss and elected to field,that score was set at 321 thanks to the twin centuries by Tillakaratne Dilshan and Kumar Sangakkara. In the recent past,chasing over 300 has become a common norm in one-day cricket. But no team has ever done it when they were imposed to hunt it down in 240 balls,rather than 300. Also,it seemed beyond Dhonis mentally drained men,considering India had been bowled out for three scores of below 200 in the series,and had lost their last three games in a row. Until Kohli decided to single-handedly keep them all back in Australia by playing one of the greatest rearguard knocks this format has ever seen. And thanks to his 86-ball hurricane,India won by seven wickets in 36.4 overs. With an asking rate of 8.025 runs per over,Sachin Tendulkar (39) and Virender Sehwag (30) gave India a terrific start. But once they perished,the onus was on the 23-year-old to simultaneously stem the bleeding and maintain the run-rate by finding the ropes on a consistent basis. The Delhi lad responded by punctuating his chanceless innings with 16 fours and two cracking sixes,and running the singles hard during his 115-run stand with Gautam Gambhir for the third wicket. He brought up his third 50 of the series in 44 balls during that partnership,before finding an unseen gear with Raina at the other end. Like in the Test matches,Kohli registered Indias only individual three-figure score in 76 balls,but this time in a winning cause. And immediately after reaching his ninth one-day hundred,Kohli destroyed the reputation of the worlds best death bowler by hitting 24 runs during Malingas seventh and Lankas 35th over. His smoking blade crunched two more consecutive boundaries off Sri Lankas premier fast bowler in his next over,the second of which powered India onto its most dominating win of this otherwise harrowing tour. To put the pyro in perspective,Kohlis tally against Malinga was a stunning 44 runs from 15 balls,a reason he cost Lanka 96 runs in 7.4 overs. It is the best knock that I have played for India, Kohli said later. We had gone into a shell due to all the losses. But following this performance,I can promise you that we will be a different side if we reach the finals. Its a big if,considering Kohli & Co will now need Australia to beat Sri Lanka in the final group match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Friday. Australia have lost the last two matches played against Sri Lanka in this series. But today,Kohli proved that hoping for a momentum-halting miracle is not such a bad thing.
