Even before the flicked-six that Suryakumar Yadav struck off the last ball of the India innings landed in the second tier of the Victor Trumper Stand, Virat Kohli had reached beside Yadav to congratulate him for his half-century.
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He hugged, shook hands and urged Yadav to celebrate. Yadav, wearing a satisfied smile, removed his helmet, raised the bat to acknowledge the crowd, and embraced Kohli. Both then gestured to the crowd to ratchet up the decibels. Later, both strolled back to the dugout, chuckling and exuding warmth like thick friends, having put on a match-winning 95-run stand in just 48 balls that took India to 179/2, a total the Dutch fell short by 56 runs.
Both, in a sense, seemed in awe of each other. Yadav is a self-confessed Kohli fan. After Kolhi’s epic unbeaten 82 against Pakistan, he put a picture of Kohli on Twitter with the heading “Manlaa re Bhauuuuu (roughly translated as hats off, brother)” with an emoticon of fire. When Kohli broke his century drought in Dubai, he again tweeted: “The king is back.” In the interaction with the host broadcasters during the innings break at the SCG: “Virat has been doing amazing, has stuck to his routines and processes. I’ve enjoyed batting with him.”
Kohli too has been raving about Yadav in recent times. After Yadav’s whirlwind 26-ball 68 against Hong Kong in the Asia Cup, Kohli bowed down to him.
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“I’ve seen so many innings when we play in the IPL, or that being done to other teams, but this was my first experience of watching him very closely. I was completely blown away. If he can stay in that zone, he can literally change the complexion of the game against any team in the world,” he would say.
On Thursday, their duet blew the Dutch away. Before they united at the crease, at 84/2 in 12 overs, India were in a safe but unspectacular spot. The Dutch bowlers had done an admirable job of keeping the run-rate at seven. In the first 10, they had conceded just 67. But all this was to change as Yadav and Kohli began to pierce the gaps.
It was the well-set Kohli’s turn to be the aggressor first. The first ball of the twelfth over, he stepped out to Tim Pringle and thundered him down the ground. Yadav smiled admiringly. No boundaries arrived in the next six balls, but the eight runs they ran in that space showed telepathic understanding.
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Two of the finest judges of runs and quickest runners between the wickets in the team, they would not bother calling out for runs, but would just exchange a glance before setting off. Kohli, as he does with so many other players, does not need to yell or nudge for a quick double. Often when he turns back for the second run, Yadav might have already begun to run the second run. The understanding between them was telepathic, reminiscent of the heyday of MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh. Remarkably, Kohli and Yadav consumed just five dot balls, a testament to their ball-manoeuvring skill.
Yadav then took over the aggressor’s mantle, cracking successive boundaries off Paul van Meekeren, before handing out the same treatment to Bas de Leede, and in between whipping Logan van Beek through midwicket.
They struck just three sixes — two of them in the last over—yet they sustained a tempo of nearly 12 runs an over.
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That’s the genius of Yadav, who still managed to complete his half-century in 25 balls, and Kohli. They rely not just on sixes to top up the scores, but on fours, twos, ones and whatever run they could hoard. One is undoubtedly India’s finest player of the era; another is arguably the finest T20 player in current form.
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Together, they make India’s middle-order the most powerful in the world. Most teams are packed with top-order heavyweights, but with a shallow middle-order.
Either, they have robust hitters in the middle or run accumulators. None have, anyway, as classical a pair as Kohli and Yadav, who can take your breath away with their strokes, making them the most watchable duo in T20 cricket.
The stroke-making is pure, there are few heaves and slogs, hacks and cracks. The strokes are mostly from the batting manual, but from within the orthodox they have expanded the scope and range of the strokes to such a level that few others could imagine, let alone execute those shots. Like Kohli’s six on the rise against Haris Rauf, or Yadav’s whiplash cut behind the square.
It is a treat for leg-side lovers—both are perhaps the best players of the flick, able to employ the shot to score boundaries in a wide arc from midwicket to just behind the keeper’s left. That said, they are so well-rounded that they could play strokes all around the ground against all kinds of bowlers on all sorts of grounds.
Yadav’s contribution in making India’s batting lethal cannot be emphasised more. He has unburdened the top three as well as the lower middle order. Sharma, Kohli and KL Rahul could take more time to get their innings going with the knowledge that Yadav could walk in at any time and just accelerate the scoring. Just as Hardik Pandya and Dinesh Karthik needn’t worry about trying to hit every ball out of the ground from the first ball they face. He could don a variety of roles—from an anchor to a finisher and an enforcer to a destroyer. In current form, he is India’s best T20 batsman, arguably the best T20 batsman in the world. The body of work is jaw-dropping — 1060 runs at an average of 37 and strike rate of 176, a fifty-plus score in every three innings. He is the supposed missing link who has become the main piece.
Yadav has been to this team what Yuvraj was to Dhoni’s 2007 T20 World Cup batch. He makes his batting look easy; he makes others’ batting look easy too. He has unburdened the fellow batters without over-burdening himself. And with him and Kohli in roaring form, India could well start dreaming of winning the World Cup.
