Cricket takes away as much hope as it gives

With all his might, Virat Kohli threw a ball at the batsman’s end. MS Dhoni sprinted forward like a gush of wind, towards the stumps. He was there in no time. He safeguarded it and coolly absorbed Kohli’s fire without reacting to the situation.

Virat Kohli would have gone for 2 had the top edge not fallen short of Sam Billings. He would have gone for 7 had umpire rightly judged him out. Had any of these gone the other way, Kohli would not have gone on to hit a six and a four in the next over. The focus then shifted to Yuvraj Singh. The umpire turned down Moeen Ali’s loud cry amidst a roaring Nagpur crowd. Replays showed the ball would have hit top of middle stump.

An hour later Amit Mishra outfoxed Ben Stokes for 0 before the umpire signalled no-ball. The fortune had evened out England’s damage with 38 runs, but only before Ashish Nehra trapped Stokes lbw during the second T20I between India and England at Nagpur’s Vidarbha Cricket Stadium.

The pendulum of fortune swung to and fro, playing with the faint-hearted. The bookies, too, must have had a hard time. Their money was on the line. More importantly, a series was at stake. Another defeat would have been Kohli’s first series defeat as full-time captain. He is not used to defeat. For that matter, Kohli does not know fortune either. Instead, he has a formula of his own, maybe a potion, to manufacture luck. And the swing of fortune had put him under pressure — something he thrives on.

With all his might he threw a ball at the batsman’s end. MS Dhoni sprinted forward like a gush of wind, towards the stumps. He was there in no time. He safeguarded it and coolly absorbed Kohli’s fire without reacting to the situation.

The square-leg umpire walked towards Kohli, asking him not to do so. But Kohli, now King Kohli, responded with a touch of arrogance. He did not flinch after umpire’s warning. If anything, he injected more aggression into the team. He asked the crowd to generate more noise to dent England’s spirit. Though many thought the match was not India’s to win, Kohli infected his teammates with his outrageous energy.

All the same, cricket takes away as much hope as it gives, and many a time luck comes in to play. The saga of fortune, nonetheless, continued in the death overs as well.

England would have needed 14 off the last over had Jos Buttler’s mistimed shot not cleared Kohli at long-on. And maybe England would have won the match had umpire not wrongly judged a set Joe Root off the first ball of the last over when England needed 8 off 6.

“Very frustrating. It [the decision] absolutely shifted the momentum in the 20th over. Losing a batsman [Root] off the first ball, who has faced 40 balls on a wicket that’s not easy to time the ball on, is quite a bit of a hammer blow. It proved very costly all things considered a couple of decisions did not go our way. We still should have won the game,” said a frustrated Eoin Morgan.

Maybe England would have attained something they have been deprived of for over two months — a series win. However, it is T20 cricket. Form, along with fortune, does not take time to change.

To put things into perspective, England needed 41 off the last 5 overs with Root and Stokes set at the crease. Down the order were Buttler and Moeen, followed by a bunch of bowling all-rounders who knew no fear but were fully aware of how to inject it. But little did England know that Ashish Nehra and Jasprit Bumrah would halt the pendulum of fortune and win it by 5 runs.

Again, they needed a mere 41 off 30 with 7 wickets in hand. On another day, we would have seen a different outcome, but India had the last laugh.

“Bumrah was asking me what to do every ball (in the final over). I just told him to back his skills. Even if it goes for a six, you still wake up tomorrow. It’s not the end of the world,” said Kohli after the match.

Contrast this with Frank Worrell. When the scores were level in the first tied Test at Brisbane 66 seasons back, Worrell walked up to his spearhead Wes Hall: “Remember, Wes, if you bowl a no-ball you’ll never be able to go back to Barbados.”

How cricket has changed!

The first T20I at Kanpur was one-sided. The second at Nagpur had everyone hooked till the last ball. Cricket is indeed a funny game, and we have no clue what is in the store for the final encounter at Bengaluru’s Chinnaswamy Stadium.

From the umpire judging not out when Kohli was plumb to Mishra overstepping when he knocked over Stokes to a mishit going for a six at crucial juncture to the umpire judging leg-before when Root had a thick inside edge, cricket takes away as much hopes as it gives.