At the halfway stage, Sri Lanka would have felt they had one foot in the
final, having left the India bowlers deflated after a dominating
performance with the bat. And they would have been right to think that
way, the Indian batting having shown little promise in the series and
the team on the brink of elimination.
But Virat Kohli put on an imperious display of strokemaking, his
malleable wrists powering an Indian fightback conspicuous by its absence
on what had been, until now, two forgettable overseas trips. Kohli's
innings made a mockery of an imposing score, kept India's finals hopes
alive and left Sri Lanka having to beat Australia for a third time in
the tournament to knock India out.
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| Virat Kohli |
Given India's poor outings with the bat in their recent games, one would
have expected them to struggle to chase a target of 321 in 50 overs.
They achieved it in 36.4 - needing to chase it in 40 to stay alive in
the series - and did so with Kohli finishing things off in a blaze of
glory. Kohli was in the zone; he dismissed anything that came his way
with clinical precision, found the boundary at will whether the field
was in or pushed back, ran swiftly between the wickets to catch the
fielders off guard and middled the ball with scarcely believable
consistency.
While Kohli was the protagonist in India's successful chase, the other
characters played their due part. Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar
would have wanted to do more but gave India the explosive start they
desperately needed to stage a counterattack; Gautam Gambhir continued to
be fluent, just four boundaries in a knock of 63 off 64 balls showing
the toil behind the runs; and Suresh Raina, under pressure to perform,
kept Kohli valuable company in a matchwinning stand.
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