The eyes of cricket lovers all over the world were glued to their TV screens when India took on New Zealand in the last league of the Champions Trophy.
NZ’s Glenn Phillips dives to his right to catch India’s Virat Kohli during their Champions Trophy match in Dubai yesterday. Pic/PTI
The fans at the Dubai stadium here were expecting something special from Virat Kohli on his 300th ODI appearance. His wife Anushka Sharma and brother Vikas had specially flown in to make it memorable too. The eyes of cricket lovers all over the world were glued to their TV screens when India took on New Zealand in the last league of the Champions Trophy.
Fans disappointed
But much to the dismay of the huge gathering of Indian fans, the thunder was taken away by a superb catch by Glenn Phillips, who dived full length to his right at point to pluck the ball out of thin air to leave almost everyone stunned. After his excellent match-winning century against Pakistan last Sunday, every cricket-lover wanted Kohli to celebrate the landmark with another grand innings. The way Kohli began, he seemed in good touch and the cut shot he played off Matt Henry was well executed. But to his bad luck, Phillips leapt like superman to grab the ball with his right hand to pull off a stunning catch to put an end to the brief Kohli show.
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Kohli’s recent poor run had many thinking that the end of his career was near. However, after struggling for long — be it due to technical flaws or mental issues of dealing with repeated failures — he finally found his mojo here last Sunday when he scored a superb century to guide India to victory over Pakistan. As his 300th ODI game was devoid of much pressure as both the sides had ensured their place in the semis, one expected another free-flowing, stroke-filled knock from the star player who became only the 21st international player and seventh India to join the 300 ODI club.
Interestingly, even before playing his 300th ODI match, Kohli already had more runs in his kitty than 19 of the 21 players who have played more ODI games than him. At 14,085 runs in 299 games, only Sachin Tendulkar (18,426 in 463 ODIs) and Kumara Sangakkara (14,234 in 404 ODIs) were ahead of Kohli. As far as centuries are concerned, Kohli has 51 ODI hundreds, having surpassed Tendulkar’s 49 a few matches ago. Of course, over the years, the ODI format has changed with the advent of T20s. Earlier, 250 was considered defendable; now, anything under 300 is below par.
Unique performer
Yet, getting over 14,000 runs and 51 centuries in only 300 ODIs makes Kohli a unique performer. His exploits in Test cricket as well as T20s only add to his aura.
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