Between March 2011 and and March 2012, the people waited for Sachin Tendulkar. With 99 international centuries, he was on the verge of something nobody else had ever considered achieving. Cricket stats are usually for a niche set of people, but this one grew as time went on. It sprouted tendrils that curled past the nuffies before lacing their way through broader society. For 33 international innings, more and more people watched each time as Tendulkar walked out to bat and returned without a ton. It almost drove them mad.
That wait was a year and four days. Virat Kohli’s version dwarfs it. As the man who succeeded Tendulkar as the centre of India’s batting solar system, Kohli churned out hundreds like a machine. His first three years when he was only playing 50-over cricket took some time, but once his Test career started the longest gap he had to abide was eight months. Across the formats he went back to back routinely, three in a row twice, four in five innings at one stage. Before the interregnum, he scored 70 centuries in just over 10 years.
Then it stopped. Not for any apparent reason. He kept making starts, kept making scores, some of them big, some unbeaten. He just couldn’t get a hundred – the man whose principal skill to this point had been converting those. A year became two, then approached three. The streak spanned 83 innings. In 26 of them, he scored half-centuries. He just couldn’t get over the line.
Of course, it shouldn’t matter. The hundred is an arbitrary number. But batters know that is the measure on which they are judged on most, so of course it matters. Of course it gets in their heads, affects their thinking, which affects their play. The drought across formats finally ended in September 2022, in low-key fashion with a T20 hundred against Afghanistan during an Asia Cup that was treated as a World Cup warm-up. The gap between Test hundreds, though, went on, past three years, out to 42 innings in 24 Tests.
Finally, in Ahmedabad on Sunday in the fourth and final Test against Australia, it ended. Kohli went big on day four, resuming on 59, finishing on 186, misfiring a shot at 200 when running out of partners. It was an innings of discipline more than stroke play, batting almost all day in enervating heat. It was also curiously lacking in ambition on a pitch where 19 wickets have fallen in four days.
There are explanations. After years of falling short, anxiety would have been an obstacle even had he been facing a tennis ball. There was pressure in needing to seize one chance on a batting pitch after playing the rest of the series on turners. To Kohli’s advantage was that India don’t need to win this last Test given they already lead the series. A draw does risk missing the World Test Championship final, but Sri Lanka winning 2-0 in New Zealand would have to be counted among the unlikelier prospects in cricket.
The match situation was a factor: 309 for four when Ravindra Jadeja got out in the morning, still 171 runs behind Australia’s first innings, with the wicketkeeper and lower order for company after middle-order bat Shreyas Iyer withdrew with injury. India did need Kohli to bat long enough to close the door on any chance of losing.
What made less sense was going stonewall, when taking runs off Australia would have been the faster way to reduce risk. Even before Jadeja was out, Kohli started the day scoring 12 runs in 22 overs. The 41 runs to reach his hundred took 39 overs. There were few close catchers, gaps to boundary riders, and a surface offering negligible turn, but blocking spin straight back down the pitch was the mode of the day.
Even being bowled out 100 behind would have been a safe position for India, unlikely to have time to suffer the same fate twice if Australia batted long enough to set a target, while it would have given India a chance to exert pressure on Australia with the ball. If you want a result on surfaces like this you need to push the game along.
Instead Kohli was able to concentrate on personal achievements in what was the best situation to do so. His focus didn’t hurt his team. It made the home crowd happy. It now gives India the benefit of a Kohli with that monkey off his back. When the milestone came, he recognised the low-octane nature of the show, offering only a measured wave to the crowd and a kiss of his wedding ring. Then back to work.
More than 42 overs had passed before Kohli hit his first boundary of the day. It started his most fluent period, stroking ten fours in 25 overs, including a couple of signature gorgeousness. Then as Axar Patel started bombing sixes, Kohli reverted to singles. After Axar was out, singles. India had the lead, the scoreboard was irrelevant, and the only reason Kohli was still out there was to chase a double century. He had faced 340 balls for 177 runs, having so many opportunities to get closer. The dwindling batting resources at the other end were apparently something he had not seen coming.
By the time Kohli was trying to boss the strike, with nine fielders on the fence and the tip of the tail for company, it was like he couldn’t remember how. His signature bunt for two, feature of so many T20 chases, instead ran out Umesh Yadav. His first attempted big hit was dropped. His second was held in the deep. He had tried to shift gears and missed the clutch. It ended an innings of endurance, of technical correctness, of flashes of mica in the stone. Still, let’s hope that his next effort can have more of the former shine.
