Flooded with match-winners, India still need Kohli to fire against Australia today

In their seven victories in the 2015 World Cup, India have had *six* different players win the Player-of-the-Match award. Despite the brilliance of the bowling attack, four of them have been batsmen, and only two have been bowlers ( Kohli, Dhawan, Ashwin, Shami, Dhawan, Raina, Rohit). The one player to repeat is Shikhar Dhawan, the only India batsman to have made two hundreds in the tournament. Every one of India’s top six batsmen are averaging more than they do in their careers. Four of India’s five main bowlers have averages lower than their career averages. The accolades and statistics prove India hasn’t been dependent on one or two players to come good. [caption id=“attachment_2172603” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  It is time for Virat Kohli to shine. Getty[/caption] “I think what’s important for us is we have scored runs in all the games, whether we have batted first or chased, and still, we don’t have our batsmen in the top five run scorers list for the World Cup, which means everybody has chipped in, everybody has contributed, which is a good position to be in, especially in the knockout stages,” India captain MS Dhoni said after his team beat Bangladesh in the quarterfinals. “We’ll have to keep repeating what we have been doing; as simple as that. You win a game, whatever you have done right, you have to keep repeating. Maybe the individuals who get the number of wickets, they will change. The batsmen who scores runs, the names will change, but still, we are scoring runs and we are taking wickets. That will be good for us.” Despite the shared success, there is one player India should want to fire in the semi-finals against Australia: Virat Kohli. It feels like Kohli has struggled in the World Cup but that’s only because he has become so ridiculously good at the art of batting. Only Suresh Raina averages more for India than Kohli’s 60.80 and only Dhawan has made more than Kohli’s 304 runs. Kohli also has a match-winning hundred against Pakistan to his credit. But Kohli raised the bar in the way he dominated Australia in the Test series prior to this tournament, when he made four hundreds in four Tests. He was ruthless and brutal and intent on stamping his name on every match. He didn’t just want to score runs, he wanted to make the Australian bowlers run home to their mommies. “I don’t think he has batted badly [in the World Cup],” Dhoni said this past Sunday. “It’s not that he has scored a century every time he has gone out to bat. But everybody [is] relating his performance with the Test series and expecting a hundred in every innings from him." Tomorrow, Kohli comes to face to face with Australia again and knowing him, he will want to dominate Australia in the same way. “There couldn’t be a better time for us (to beat Australia),” Kohli told cricket.com.au. “It is an opportunity for us to do justice to the way we have played so far in Australia.” In Cricket Monthly, Simon Barnes lays out his two versions of greatness. “The difference between being very good at sport and being one of the greats is measured in time. But you can measure time in two quite separate ways. One way is to demonstrate the qualities of excellence time and time again, season after season, year after year, amassing the kind of numbers no one can argue with. “The other way is to be excellent at the right moment. At a time not of your choosing but of theirs. It’s about getting it right in the one special Now. Rising to the very biggest of big occasions.” Kohli has already shown he can amass numbers year after year. But he has yet to seize the moment in one-day cricket. His record in knock-out games is poor: an average of 27 from 11 matches with zero centuries. The opportunity to remedy that awaits.