King is back - that is what fans have been saying after Virat Kohli scored a match winning 73 of 54 balls to keep Royal Challengers Bangalore in the hunt for the playoffs.
Despite all the struggle in this IPL season before this knock, he was in a relaxed state of mind and scored those runs as he has done in the past for team India and his franchise Bangalore. After all the bad form where he was getting out in different ways this IPL, one could see Kohli at his best making easy work of the chase of 170 on a difficult wicket.
Bad form
He was very emotional yesterday and with every four he or his partner hit he punched the air to show how happy he was to get out of this bad form where he had scored three golden ducks, six single digits and an average of 21.45 scoring 309 runs this season at a strike rate of just 118 which has been lowest till date in his 15-year career at the world’s number one franchise cricket, the IPL.
He had his share of luck where a catch was dropped and an inside edge went close to the stumps but he and his fans were praying that the master of chase got some form back and he showed that by taking on Rashid Khan, the best in the business, by hitting him for two sixes.
Learn from it
Kohli was very expressive in his post-match presentation too. “I know where my game stands and you cannot come this far in your international career without having the ability to counter the situations and counter conditions and counter different kinds of bowling. I don’t want to put this behind me. I want to learn from it. I know that I have that drive in me to go back to back to back, which motivates me more as I mentioned in contributing towards my team’s cause and making my team win. I am very aware of what’s going on and I am absolutely at ease with myself. And very, very confident about the fact that I will keep getting more and more balanced as a human being. Eventually that’s what I want to get out of all these experiences because there is so much life beyond this that we don’t understand the value, the true value of finding this balance.”
Bangalore might still get knocked out if Delhi Capitals win their last game tomorrow against Mumbai Indians as they have a better net run rate but if Delhi have a bad day and lose to Mumbai, the other teams in the playoffs better watch out because the King is back.
