On April 6th 2014, a melancholic Virat Kohli collected his player of the tournament award for the World T20. He had scored 319 runs in the tournament, carrying India with four fifties in six innings and adding a magnificent 77 in the final. It wasn’t enough. Sri Lanka cruised to the target of 131 with two overs to spare, to deny India a second World T20 title.
Fast forward to March 31st 2016 and Kohli’s brilliant 89* in the semi-final could only give India a slightly above-par 192. It wasn’t enough again. India’s star batsman has not had the requisite batting support to take his nation to the trophy in the last two tournaments.
On home soil, entering the 2016 edition with ten wins out of eleven, India looked a safe bet to win the World T20. But throughout the tournament the cracks began to show. They were humbled in their opener against New Zealand. They squeezed past Bangladesh. In their other two group games, Kohli scripted two perfect chases. Against Pakistan, when every other batsman looked all at sea, his 55* guided India to victory in the most heated rivalry in cricket. Then, against Australia, in what was effectively a quarter-final, he accelerated at the perfect time during his 82* to take India to the semis. He called it his best ever T20 innings. Few would argue.
Kohli’s run tally for the tournament was 273, at an average of 136.5 and a strike rate of 146. The rest of the Indian team scored 396 runs, at an average of 15 and a strike rate of 105. It was as if, in every game, Kohli was playing on a different pitch to his team-mates. While he was somehow deflecting yorkers through point for four, his batting partners couldn’t even put away the bad balls.
Any successful side at a world tournament will have batting contributions throughout the side, but it simply wasn’t there for India this March. England have seen Roy, Buttler and Root score fifties. West Indies got a hundred from Gayle, plus fifties from Fletcher, Charles and Simmons. Aside from Kohli’s three fifties, India have mustered a thirty each from Dhoni and Raina.
All three of those sides have looked flawed. England’s seam attack was poor in their opening two games; West Indies were baffled by Afghanistan’s spinners. But what has made them, and not India, finalists is their ability for other players to compensate.
When Kohli could only score 23 against New Zealand, the rest of the line-up crumbled to 79. When he made 24 against Bangladesh, India posted 146, which would have been chased, had it not been for a calamitous final three balls for the Tigers. He seemed to relish the pressure of the big occasion in a way that other batsman simply could not. It’s probably why he averages over 90 in T20I chases.
Back in the 2014 final, Yuvraj Singh spluttered to 11 off 21 balls, while Kohli at the other end went to 77 off 58. In the 2016 semi, Ajinkya Rahane’s effort was not as disastrous as Yuvraj’s, but his 40 off 35 definitely hindered the team. Meanwhile, Kohli breezed to 89 off 47. It’s not as if these team-mates are bad batsman—they all have solid IPL records, so they should know how to navigate the Indian conditions. In fact, Kohli’s IPL stats are relatively modest compared to his T20I record; he just steps up to the international stage in a way that his contemporaries have not.
Perhaps it’s his intensity that makes Kohli so good in the pressure situations. It was on display all tournament. In the Australia game he didn’t even raise his bat for his fifty, such was the tension of the chase. He looked a man possessed to win the game for this nation. He succeeded that time, but he cannot always bat India to victory alone.
India will be bitterly disappointed not to have made it to the final. The cliché goes that the Indian Premier League has made them T20 specialists, but their only World title came in 2007—before the inaugural IPL. 2016 seemed their best opportunity. They finally had a balanced, in-form team, with a reliable bowling attack. But it was only Kohli who lived up to, and exceeded, the pre-tournament hype.
Unless Root scores 79 in the final, Kohli’s 273 will make him the leading run scorer in the 2016 World T20, as he was in 2014. But just like in 2014, his heroic exploits with the bat have not been enough to win the tournament.
