That Virat Kohli appears to have a magic wand to turn it on at his own whim seems an enigmatic story about a legend-in-the-making in cricket’s annals. While South Africa battle a familiar feeling for a second Test in a row, the only drama off the field is the side quip about the quality of Indian pitches.
Michael Vaughan, the England captain, would have learned quickly that much like on the cricket pitch, timing is everything. Coming on the back of a soggy ICC Cricket World Cup and a topsy-turvy drawn Ashes series, the former England captain should have seen the ‘sore loser’ comments coming from a mile away.
On commentary on the first day, unrelated to Vaughan, the discussion raged only briefly about the away results of captains about how not only Faf du Plessis, but also, other captains around the world showed declining records when it came to winning away from home in the past five years.
Whether this is a case of complacency on overburdened teams to preserve records at home and therefore, succumb abroad or whether there is a growing contention about the need to make pitches conducive for home teams is something for the International Cricket Council (ICC) to debate amongst the member nations.
The only anomaly on that record that seems to stand out is the multi record breaker/maker of the moment, Virat Kohli. While Vaughan complained about the nature of the pitches in India that accorded batsman luxury at the start of a Test, Kohli and his team were busy burying South Africa deeper into the match in Pune and in the series.
Doing an almost encore, barring Rohit Sharma’s innings, if Mayank Agarwal put India in the driver’s seat, the Indian captain along with Ajinkya Rahane and Ravindra Jadeja tightened the noose around the South Africa who have their work cut out for them, with India having declared at over 600 runs.
The long Indian innings that took up almost two days to leave just enough time to pluck three South African wickets at dusk, almost eerily similar to the first Test in Vizag, provided enough time for statisticians and aficionados enough time to ponder over the records Kohli is making as well as breaking.
While those would be documented sufficiently enough on the page not to revisit them, the double century from the Indian captain, also, provided enough room for nostalgia, reflecting on the fact once more that when Sachin Tendulkar was on the cusp of retirement, Indian cricket almost went into mourning, celebrating the batting maestro on the one hand and wondering when the next legend that would walk through the doors.
India were lucky in that regard because not in the decade since Tendulkar’s retirement, Kohli has been virtually unstoppable, taking the world, particularly Test cricket, by storm. With the kind of records Kohli is already leaving his mark on, it would seem that even if South Africa’s campaign to make amends in India is falling flat, and even if the pitches might have turned some off, Kohli is certainly keeping Test cricket’s scoreboard ticking, the statisticians and historians busy and aficionados in disbelief.