cricket news: On Kohli At Mohali

[ADMIN 322]

Last week, I showed that the perception of Virat Kohli as a great finisher as opposed to that of Tendulkar as a great batsman but an ordinary finisher, was an illusion. The difference in their records was an artifact of what batsmen at the other end were producing. Since then, he has scored a fine 82 not out to lead India’s run chase against Australia at Mohali on Sunday.

The end game in India’s chase developed more or less as Kohli (and every experienced limited overs batsman since the 1970s who has found themselves in a similar position) must have imagined it - a stiff asking rate for a small number of overs. Just how stiff was the required rate over the last 5 overs? India needed 61 to win after the end of the 15th over.

 

The figure above shows the average scoring rate for each of the 20 overs over the five most recent IPL seasons depending on the number of wickets which fell in the over. Losing wickets depresses the scoring rate. These are combined figures for teams setting and chasing targets.

To evaluate what the average scoring rate is, depending on number of wickets lost during an over, let’s look at the first innings of these games. It is reasonable to assume that here, teams are looking for every last run they can possibly muster. It will provide some idea of what the upper limit for scoring is in the last 5 overs of a T20 innings. The record shows that in the IPL over the last five seasons, the average batting line up facing the average bowling line up scores 57 runs over the last 5 overs of a T20 innings is they don’t lose a wicket in any of these 5 overs. If they lose 1 wicket in each of the 5 overs, they average 40 runs.

Kohli and Mahendra Singh Dhoni are not your average IPL quality batsmen. They’re accomplished, international quality players. As the Test captain, Dhoni did better with the bat than Ganguly, and the latter was a specialist batsman, while Dhoni was also India’s first choice specialist wicket keeper. Australia’s attack at Mohali was decidedly average overall (by IPL standards, let alone international), and in the spin department, arguably below average.

There were, basically, two really good bowlers in the match - Ravichandran Ashwin for India, and Josh Hazlewood for Australia. The others were either veteran T20 specialists (Ashish Nehra), newcomers who may or may not progress towards the more difficult challenges of ODI and Test cricket (Jasprit Bumrah, Adam Zampa, Hardik Pandya, Nathan Coulter-Nile), and all-rounders who would not make most international sides if they were bowlers alone (Ravindra Jadeja, Shane Watson, James Faulkner and Glenn Maxwell).

This Australian attack lacked the pace of the Test attacks Kohli mastered in Australia in 2014-15. It lacked the guile of Saeed Ajmal (before his suspension) or the left arm pace of Junaid Khan, whom Kohli has played brilliantly many times. Even the match situation never really got out of hand for India. There was an opening stand, and as bad as Suresh Raina’s form has been, he scored quickly while he was in. India had two players with non-trivial batting credentials to spare when Dhoni scored the winning hit.

There is a tendency in cricket to favor batting innings which occur on the winning side. But on batting alone, given the quality of opposition and the match situation Angelo Mathews’ 73 not out on Saturday ought to rank above Kohli’s effort. Sri Lanka’s situation was dire - their target was more difficult, and their top order suffered a genuine collapse. Finally, Sri Lanka do not have anybody comparable to Dhoni in their middle order. Chris Gayle’s remarkable ability to deposit modest bowling out of the ground must also figure in the discussion.

61 in the last 5 overs, for this pair, against this bowling, was nowhere near an exceptionally difficult challenge. Australia seemed to play into Kohli’s hands. What is more likely, is that Australia simply did not have the bowling to challenge a top class batsman. They would still get wickets, because it’s the nature of the T20 game. Batsmen take chances which are suicidal by normal batting standards. They take them because a team has 10 wickets to spend over 20 overs, so if, out of half a dozen suicidal chances, 2 result in dismissals but the other 4 go to the boundary, that’s not such a bad return. In an ODI game, it would be a terrible return.

Until about the 16th over of the innings, Kohli’s wicket was not challenged by Australia. The field was set back and he was offered an unchallenged run every ball. He took it. Even when Australia did challenge a batsman, it was a gesture rather than a serious ploy. The short-leg and the slip that Yuvraj Singh faced symbolized Australia’s (probably correct) opinion that Yuvraj is past his peak. But even today, the medium pace of Shane Watson and James Faulkner is unlikely to test his defense.

The descriptions of Kohli’s innings in the press have been astonishing. It is as though the greatest hits from the cliches of cricket writing over the last 40 years exploded over the page. The facts suggest that it was a professional effort of an elite batsman against a decidedly modest opponent.

Privately, most people I speak to admit that they know that these T20 games are not producing cricket of a high quality. They say they know that, for example, Kohli’s 141 on the 5th day at Adelaide was a vastly more difficult examination of his skill, competitive temperament and concentration because it was longer, the conditions were more difficult and the bowling was better and he had to concentrate for far longer. It is obvious, they tell me privately, that not making a mistake for 174 deliveries on that wicket against the serious pace of Mitchell Johnson, the sheer mastery of Ryan Harris, the control of Peter Siddle and the accurate off spin of Nathan Lyon, was, by many orders of magnitude more difficult than the situation Kohli was faced with at Mohali on Sunday. They also say that they understand that the fact that India lost that Adelaide Test will unfairly tarnish the way Kohli’s batting that day will be remembered, however often Ian Chappell reminds us about it on commentary.

But this is what they are willing to say privately - that T20 is not merely different, but inferior in quality as a cricketing proposition compared to the longer game. Publicly, the collective roar of acclaim belies occasional the calm, accurate observation made by the former England fast bowler Darren Gough “Average bowling from @CAComms but @imVkohli was brilliant. Proper player”.

In 1998, after Sachin Tendulkar played a couple of innings which were received similarly, the writer C.P. Surendran encapsulated what Sachin Tendulkar meant to India. “Batsmen walk out into the middle alone.” Surendran observed. “Not Tendulkar. Every time Tendulkar walks out to the crease, a whole nation, tatters and all, marches with him to the battle arena. A pauper people pleading for relief, remission from the life-long anxiety of being Indian, by joining in spirit with their visored savior.”

Nearly 20 years later, not much has changed has it? Indians are richer, more powerful and perhaps more narrowly nationalistic. There were no national anthems at the beginning of games as there are now in 1998. There was no twitter or facebook or internet comment forum to amplify the march of nationalistic jingoism. But there was, often, the same impatience with confounding detail, the same aversion to complicated reality. We are still, by and large, interested in one thing, and one thing only - winning. Cricket for its own sake does not seem hold popular interest in the way India winning does.

Virat Kohli is already a top class batsman who is currently in fantastic form. Nothing he did at Mohali adds to his reputation, or tells us anything about his batting which we did not already know. But the way we reacted to the effort ought to tell us plenty about ourselves, and none of it flatters either the professional cricket reporting community or those among us who would describe themselves as cricket fans.

Kohli is only 27. He’s going to get better, and before he’s done, will probably build a truly great body of work which any past all-time great would be proud of. If we don’t start looking soon, we’re going to miss most of it.