Dubai dispatch: Virat Kohli finds his happy place against favourite opponent Pakistan, and they still can't hate him

Those invested in Pakistan cricket for at least the last three and a half decades will recall with fondness, one is sure, a chubby-cheeked, curly-haired 16-year-old who looked far younger than his years, taking on bowlers twice his age with complete surety and authority. They will rave about his technique – high left elbow, classical, clear-cut strokeplay, barndoor defence.

They will remember how he took Abdul Qadir, no less, to the cleaners in an exhibition one-day game. They will have goosebump-triggering memories of him shooing away physio Ali Irani after being struck on his face by in only his fourth Test match by Waqar Younis, wiping off the blood, putting the next ball away for four and conjuring a courageous half-century in Sialkot, in 1989.

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Those invested in Pakistan cricket for at least the last three and a half decades had the great privilege of watching Sachin Tendulkar in the flesh. And blood, did you say? They haven’t been as lucky when it comes to Virat Kohli – India’s last visit to Pakistan was in July 2008, a month before the Delhiite’s international debut – but if they see in Kohli a kindred Tendulkar spirit, they will be well within their rights.

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Tendulkar doesn’t boast the same extraordinary numbers against Pakistan as Kohli, but the impact of his knocks resonate across the border even today. In his very first Test series, he made 215 runs in six innings with two half-centuries against an attack that included Wasim Akram, Waqar, Qadir and Imran Khan. Over time, he played several masterful hands, including an epochal 136 in a losing cause while battling excruciating back pain in the Chennai Test of 199, a flowing 194 not out in Multan five years later, that extraordinary 98 in the World Cup in Centurion in 2003.

In five World Cup outings against Pakistan, Tendulkar picked up the Player of the Match award three times, including in his last World Cup in 2011, in a semifinal clash. Those in Pakistan that didn’t see Sunil Gavaskar and Mohinder Amarnath, among others, firsthand will have believed until a decade and a half back that no Indian could snatch Tendulkar’s pre-eminent place from their consciousness.

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And yet, today, they are faced with a new normal. A normal where they have become unabashed fans of a man who has never graced Pakistan with his sinewy brilliance, a man who scores runs by the bushel against their heroes and yet who they can’t come to dislike or disrespect. Sport does that, you know. It brings people together, it binds them in a tight knot of admiration and adoration without such mundane things as borders and nationalism coming in the way.

Pakistan’s cricketers might not entertain such fond feelings. Oh, let’s not get this wrong, they absolutely respect Virat Kohli. They are fans as much as they are opponents, though their fandom doesn’t prevent them from doing their damnedest to get him out, cheaply. The respect, the awe, the reverence – that comes from Kohli treating them to such subliminal brilliance that even though they are at the receiving end, they can’t help but appreciate the craft, the determination, the spirit, the enterprise, the luminescence of arguably the greatest all-format batter of his generation.

Further affirmation of the stoking of the Kohli fire at the sight of his fiercest opponents came at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium on Sunday night. It hasn’t been the greatest 13 and a half or so months of international cricket for the 36-year-old, whose two most luminous achievements of 2024 came in the final of the T20 World Cup in Bridgetown in June, when he was the Player of the Match during India’s conquest of South Africa, and in the second innings of the Perth Test in November, when he made his 30th Test century.

Otherwise, 2024 was a cricketing year less fulfilling, across formats. He came into the Champions Trophy with a cloud hanging over his head – just one half-century in his previous five innings – and those clouds became even more gloomy when he fell to a leg-spinner for a fifth time in his last six ODI innings against Bangladesh on Thursday, dismissed for 22 by Rishad Hossain.

Pakistan match sends Kohli back to his happy place

But throw Kohli in against Pakistan, and it’s as if he has never been short of runs, as if his pre-eminence has never been questioned.

Great players maintain a degree of consistency against most, if not all oppositions, but even they have their favourites. Without a doubt, Kohli’s favourite opposition is just across the Wagah even though in his 16 and a half years at the highest level, he has played just 28 matches against them, and none at all in the five-day format.

Sunday was when Kohli was transported to his happy place – a run-chase against Pakistan. There was a time when no chase was beyond him, no number too daunting, no required run-rate too steep. As if having a computer for a brain but batting with the chutzpah that can never be a machine’s character trait, he would go through the gears gradually until settling on a gear that was uniquely Kohli, beyond even the realms of imagination of most of the rest. Kohli may not be that same chase monster he once was, but watching him this night, one would never have guessed.

His 51st ODI hundred was quintessentially Kohli. Unlike his captain, Kohli’s bread-and-butter isn’t muscular blows. Rohit Sharma has made it a habit of filling up his innings of substance with a bouquet of boundaries. Kohli is almost the exact opposite, the boundaries complementing the runs run, rather than the other way round. Case in point – this unbeaten 100, off 111 deliveries which had only seven fours. 28% of his runs in boundaries. Long before that, Rohit Sharma had exited with 20 off 15, three fours and a six. 90% of his runs in boundaries.

Kohli doesn’t worry about such comparisons, if any. He is comfortable in his own skin, with batting at his own pace, in his own inimitable fashion. He will run hard between the wickets, he will compel his partner to up his intensity. He will pick his bowlers to hit – the crack Pakistani pace trio, in this instance – and those to be watchful against. He will target his areas, work out the percentages and play accordingly. The computer inside his head is still alive and kicking, and thank goodness for that.

Pakistan have suffered humongously at Kohli’s hands historically. More, they will feel, than they, or any other side, should at the hands of one individual. They will express their disaffection only grudgingly because they don’t seem to mind Kohli stacking up one masterpiece after another. India have won 11 of the 17 ODIs Kohli has played against Pakistan. His contribution in winning causes? 742 runs, four hundreds, average 106, strike-rate 102.77. Indian have also won eight of 11 T20Is with Kohli in the mix and he has been phenomenal in that format too, averaging 91.50, remaining not out four times, taking his team over the line without fuss or favour.

For a nation that is rapidly losing faith in Babar Azam, Kohli is everything they feel their former skipper isn’t. That might be unfair on Babar because truth to tell, there are few in the world that are what Kohli is. A run-hungry behemoth whose flame might no longer be burning as bright, but which suddenly springs to life and stunningly rolls the clock back. Especially when the opposition is Pakistan.