With Rohit Sharma being rested for the match, Kohli returned to the top order for the 9th time in T20Is. Kohli took a few balls to read 1, dot, dot, dot, 1 in his first five balls, but very quickly turned into positive mode. In the sixth over of the innings, Mujeeb-ur-Rahman got a taste of the impending mayhem, went past mid-off, swept over square-leg for a boundary and then climbed to long-on for six. Kohli committed a mistake in the eighth over.
A short ball from Nabi sticks into the pitch after a touch and Kohli’s pull goes straight to the fielder over midwicket. Ibrahim Zadran, stationed there for the incident, misjudged the offer, and only managed to pass the ball over the ropes as a football goalkeeper. Over the past weeks and months, this little piece of luck has escaped Kohli, and his first mistake, more often than not, has been his last. What Kohli did well that day was to touch his shots so that he got maximum value every time.
When he hit the ball from the side, he used his wrist to make sure the ball wasn’t just hit well, it escaped the fielder. Kohli reached his half-century off the last ball of the 11th over, and though it was day time, he had enough time to end the century drought, even as his teammate KL Rahul lost his wicket. . Kohli was in no mood to leave the crease, even if the match ended a bit with both Afghanistan and India crashing out of the final race.
It was left-arm pacer Fareed Ahmed, who was on the receiving end, a short ball was pulled over midwicket for six, taking Kohli to figures of three. It is hardly a surprise that Afghanistan exploded. But, few will remember the margin of victory, as Kohli made the day good and truly his own.
Brief scores India 212/2 (Kohli 122*, Rahul 62; Farid 2/57) beat Afghanistan 111/8 (Ibrahim 64*; Bhuvneshwar 5/4) by 101 runs
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