Virat’s very special century

Syed Shoaib | NT 

Anybody even remotely connecting to cricket knows the huge difference between 99 and 100. Nobody knows it better than Mohammad Azharuddin. There’s only one slip between the cup and lip, he would say, and, the proofreader be damned!

You start your Test career with three centuries on the trot to create a yet-unbroken world record, plunder the best bowlers to have hurled the red cherry with grace and last over a decade and half in the most grueling form of the gentleman’s game, and still don’t make it to the elite group.

And how much did you miss that by? A whisker, for Pete’s sake! That one elusive match left him smarting under the lifetime pain of not having joined the band of eleven stayers of the sport: Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh and Ishant Sharma.

Joining this group of Indians Indians hold in very high esteem today is Virat Kohli. He too will regret not captaining the country’s most-loved eleven on the day. Like Azharuddin, he has only himself to blame for having fallen that much short at it. You don’t rub the administration – as it’s not always princely – the wrong way and get away with it.

Ask Kapil Da, and the swashbuckling all-rounder will vouch at Team India support to get to a world record. So, it wasn’t that because of which the stylish Hyderabadi could not make it there. Nor did form or fitness desert him in the long journey.

The captain of a team the country idolises cannot afford to court controversy. Certainly not anything to do with fixing matches. Knocking the court doors is an option, but that could only get you too little, too late. In the meanwhile, you may have to resort to taking refuge in a profession your skills or reputation seldom matter, far away from home.

Captain Rohit Sharma echoed the sentiments of millions of cricket lovers in the country when he said on Thursday: “We are currently standing in a good position in Tests thanks to the efforts of Virat Kohli. All credit should go to Virat for getting us here. I just want to build on the gains made by him.”

It probably took all the passion Virat Kohli has for the game to get the men that matter to give their nod for him to have a live audience on his big day. People who share the passion will get to root for him from the stands.

Here’s wishing the 2018 ICC Test Player of the Year all the very best to convert the rare hundred into a double century! Let’s silence those bite- and byte-hungry critics like nothing else does – with that three-digit statistical data.