VIRAT Kohli's countenance tells you a lot about him. He's unsmiling, blazingly intense. It is part of his story that on the day his father died in 2006, he was due to play for Delhi in the Ranji Trophy. He was 40 not out overnight, and Delhi was confronting a battle to save the follow-on.
Prem Kohli, who was 54, died at 3am. When the teams gathered that day, 18-year-old Virat Kohli was offered time to spend with his family. ''I want to bat,'' he said. He made 90.
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In the last days of India's dreadful tour of Australia, a grain of fight has emerged. It happened on a cool evening at Bellerive in Hobart on Tuesday, and Kohli was the kernel of it. India bowled and fielded abominably, conceding 320 to Sri Lanka and leaving itself in an apparently hopeless position.
For Mahendra Singh Dhoni's team to stay alive in the triangular competition, it not only needed to win, but extract a bonus point. It needed a whopping 321 in 40 overs against a bowling line-up headed by Lasith Malinga, Sri Lanka's idiosyncratic slinger.
Channel Nine had flung the match to Gem, its secondary station, and that about summed it up. It's football season, and India's lamentable chase in Sydney last Sunday screamed of a team with a foot on the tarmac. But Kohli (with admirable support from Gautam Gambhir and Suresh Raina) would have none of it. He played his shots, ran hard, dug in for the fight.
Approaching 100, he confronted a flashpoint. India still needed at least eight runs an over. Would he take care to ensure his landmark, or continue flashing the blade in the interests of his team? Kohli chose the latter, and by the time the 35th over came around, bowled by Malinga, the bonus-point victory was in range.
Kohli flicked Malinga, one of the better limited-overs bowlers on the planet, to leg for six with his power-laden wrists. Malinga tried to spear in yorkers, erring in execution, and Kohli whipped him away again and again for boundaries. Then he drove imperiously through the off-side twice more.
He would take 24 from Malinga's over. Now it was inevitable, and Kohli stood tall to drive down the ground for the winning runs. India had used just 36.4 overs, one of the best run chases in one-day history. Kohli's arms were raised, even squeezing out a smile as Raina joined him in celebration. India's credibility has been damaged by its awful performance in Australia, and it might not even make the one-day finals yet. But at least a shot had been fired.
This summer there have been four truly great innings: Michael Clark's 329 in the Sydney Test, when hardly a ball came from anything but the centre of his bat; David Warner's Hobart Test century on a bowler-friendly pitch; Warner's 180 from 159 balls in the Perth Test; and Kohli's unbeaten 133 from 86 balls. Kohli will struggle to play a better innings, ever. So long as he is around, there is hope for India.
