Few things in sports are as reviled as chasing personal milestones in team sports. They look embarrassing. It ends up painting a very selfish picture of a player. Look at this greedy twat putting himself above the team’s cause! Well, not necessarily. If your team is already in a position where it is impossible to lose, and you find yourself mighty close to a milestone, say a century, there’s nothing harmful in chasing that. Kohli’s century against Bangladesh was neither embarrassing nor shameless; it was perfectly normal, the most interesting part of the second innings at MCA Stadium in Pune.
Virat Kohli batted like a dream, but another century to his name seemed far-fetched, precisely because of the modest target that they were asked to chase. When Kohli was on 74, 26 runs were needed for both India’s victory and his century. Only when KL Rahul refused a single for the first time did the thought of Kohli going for his cherished three-figure mark seem like a possibility. What was mostly a boring passage of play suddenly turned into a thrilling spectacle, the crowd making their presence felt with a booming “Kohli Kohli” chant.
It was all happening, a sublime passage of play where the crowd’s emotion mirrored Kohli’s. Beneath the jubilance and the boisterous chant of the stadium, there was also a gnawing fear, of what if Kohli misses it from here, surely that wouldn’t have looked great. Kohli himself admitted this fear, as his partner KL Rahul revealed in the post-match conference.
“He [Kohli] was confused, he said it will not look too nice, not to take the single, it’s still a World Cup, and it’s still a big stage. ‘I don’t want to look like I am just trying to get the milestone’,” Rahul told the broadcasters. “But I said, I mean it is not won but still I think we’ll win quite easily, so if you can get to the milestone why not, you must try. And he did that in the end. I wasn’t going to run the singles anyway.”
Kohli then raced down the ground, and smashed a tossed-up delivery from Hasan Mahmud to complete what was his 48th ODI century. Kohli needed that century and he bluntly said so in the post-match interviews. In the 2019 World Cup, he had five half-centuries but no century. His last century in ODI World Cup came in 2015, against Pakistan in Adelaide. The fiery start from the openers, coupled with a modest target that India have been given to chase so far in this event, made it hard for Kohli to stay long enough to reach a century.
“I wanted to make a big contribution,” Kohli said after the game, having finished unbeaten on 103 off 97 balls. “I have had a few fifties in World Cups, and I have never really converted them so I just wanted to finish the game off this time around. Yeah, hang on till the end which is what I have done over the years for the team.”
It was refreshing to see him speaking about his desire to score big, primarily because one of the unwritten rules of elite sports is that participants are expected to repress their desire. But a team is made up of individuals, not the other way around. When so many individuals come together, they bring up different energy, different outlooks and visions towards a game, or a particular situation. Kohli might not have completed his century had it been someone other than Rahul on the other end. It was Rahul’s presence of mind and his desire to see Kohli completing a ton after coming this close, which allowed the latter to reach the milestone. Other players might not have thought much about it, and that’s their way of looking at the game, there’s nothing wrong with that. Only by allowing these personal expressions to flourish does a team succeed.
“We understand it is a long tournament and you need to create some momentum in the change room for the guys to come out and play like this. It’s a special feeling playing at home, playing in front of all these people so we just want to make the most of it,” concluded Kohli.
