The wait is over: Virat Kohli survives storm, hits Test hundred after three years

The Man. The Celebration.

Take a bow, @imVkohli 💯🫡#INDvAUS #TeamIndia pic.twitter.com/QrL8qbj6s9

— BCCI (@BCCI) March 12, 2023

But the three-year agony is worth exploring how sport can tease and test a batsman as good as Kohli, who seemed to be grappling with doubts about his game.

Something as basic, and vital, as which-stump stance to take against the spinners, for example. It was perplexingly fascinating. Would a batsman of such stature be tinkering with a stance – not as an act of assurance of success but as an experiment to check if this helps him cope better? And so, Kohli took the middle-stump guard against the Sri Lanka in one Test early last year; didn’t work. He tried a leg-stump stance in the next Test; didn’t work. In Bangladesh, he started with the leg-stump in the first Test at Chattogram, before moving to middle in the next; not much success.

The ball at Chattogram turf landed on the leg and middle. Kohli went back to try to turn the ball to the leg side, but bat-face totally shut, and the ball turned past the bat to ping his back pad in front of the middle stump. In the second, from a middle-stump, he lunged well forward but couldn’t get his bat ahead in time to properly manoeuvre the ball and edged it.

He doesn’t use his feet to skip forward against spin and one time he tried against Todd Murphy this series, he fell to a stumping for the first time in his career.

Kohli’s game against spin is nothing like the masters of the previous generations. Or even the best in the business currently. Domination isn’t his forte. No lavish indulgence but a more upper middle-class approach: tapping the ball into gaps, punching off back foot, steering off the front, the nurdles, the taps, the whips and the occasional Sunday-feast out with an expansive scythe through cover point to a full delivery with width outside off.

𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐊𝐨𝐡𝐥𝐢 👑⚡️#INDvAUS #TeamIndia pic.twitter.com/UXGl32n3WL

— BCCI (@BCCI) March 12, 2023

In recent times, though, a hint of poverty has peeped in. Survival has been a concern. Troubles on stretched front foot, with both edges and lbw under threat and when pressing back, the top-hand would fade out and bottom hand would take over to turn the bat into awkward angles.

Prosperity began to return in this series against Australians. The runs don’t show it – and it is indeed the marker that counts – but Kohli has found the method.

A great moment for Kohli!#INDvAUS | 📷- BCCI pic.twitter.com/eyjN2N1Rtv

— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) March 12, 2023

He has opened up in his stance and shortened the forward lunge. He is back on a middle-stump guard, but now by opening up he isn’t as wary of the lbw as he was. It was that concern that perhaps made him retreat to the leg stump in the recent past, taking care not to press his front leg across and in the way of the turning ball. But what it did to him was to make him play more across. The body is always going across from that point on and the off-break turning in has a more venomous potential for lbw, especially for someone with Kohli’s style of batting. And when you lunge across from there, the bottom-hand too can tighten a bit more than is ideal. And as Sunil Gavaskar said on these pages, without the top hand guiding the direction of the bat, it can and will turn at awkward angles to create even more problems.

And his method this series – opening-up his stance allied with middle-stump guard, has also reflected in his wagon wheel of runs. Most of his runs and even the gentle taps for dot balls have been to the leg side to the spinners. Even in this century knock (at the point when he reached his hundred) only 17 runs came on the off side to the spinners; 58 runs were on the leg side.

CENTURY for @imVkohli 🫡🫡

He's battled the heat out here and comes on top with a fine 💯, his 28th in Test cricket. #INDvAUS #TeamIndia pic.twitter.com/i1nRm6syqc

— BCCI (@BCCI) March 12, 2023

He has also been noticeably much more compact with this method. Ironically, it was only on the flattest track at Ahmedabad, was he in a bit of bother for 20 minutes at the start. On the rank turners, he has looked very composed until the ball that has consumed him, of course.

Nathan Lyon tried round the stumps line – the one turning in from a good length on middle stump line towards middle to see if the bat is dangled across and a lbw pops up. No luck, as Kohli had plenty of wood behind the leather. Lyon slipped in the straighter one with the angle, but Kohli’s hands adjusted well to nudge them away. When Todd Murphy tired of trying the same ploy and floated a couple well outside off, Kohli slashed them through cover point. Matt Kuhnemann tried his close-to-the-stumps attack on the stumps but without any turn, Kohli was unfussed.

And so, Lyon went over the stumps, trying to poke an error on the forward defensive. But time and again, Kohli stretched forward but no long a stride that his bat gets caught behind the pad; instead with what also seemed a wider stance than usual, his forward strides were more precise and the hands and the bat could come ahead. More Sachin Tendulkar than Dravid, in terms of the forward stride.

The hundred number 75 has been ticked off, and though Tendulkar’s 100 is a distant speck, the good thing is Kohli the batsman who has re-fallen in love with the game and who seems to have discovered another hidden layer to his batting has propped up. The Dark Knight has risen, a touch older, slower, but wiser.