The accolades are still pouring in for Virat Kohli, who fashioned Team India’s win over extremely competitive rival Australia virtually single-handedly. The brilliance of Kohli’s unbeaten 82 in the chase was so lustrous that players and critics from around the world are calling him the finest (limited overs) talent in world cricket today. Thanks to Kohli the WorldT20 favourites have recovered their mojo again and are on course to winning the championship. This is a sea change for a team that came so close to losing to Bangladesh that it spawned conspiracy theories regarding the desperately close finish.
In the 50-overs World Cup last year, India came across a tartar in Australia, and in their previous World Cup meeting on Indian soil in 2011 Team India had beaten Australia in a closely fought quarter-final before going on to win the title. It might appear as if Australia and India are the best teams when it comes to high-pressure ICC world events. However, that hardly applies to T20 cricket where both have proved vulnerable, with the Aussies never winning the cup and India doing so only once nine years ago.
The current championship seems to be India’s best opportunity to add more silverware to the BCCI’s cupboards as the team has struck a fine balance between dynamic batting and better-directed bowling at the death, besides its regular strengths of spin bowling enhanced by home conditions. Given the strengths of the great match “finishers” like Kohli and Dhoni, it does appear India is formidable. Fortunes, however, tend to turn quickly in T20s and India has two intense touch-and-go matches to win. Kohli has shown the winning way.
