Virat Kohli’s heroics and the spin magic by Ravindra Jadeja and Kuleep Yadav propelled India’s fourth win against Bangladesh in the World Cup 2023 on Thursday. King Kohli notched his 48th ODI Century, guiding India to a comfortable victory over Bangladesh.
Kohli’s stellar performance saw him finish unbeaten at 103 for 97 delivers with KL Rahul providing support at the crease. However, Kohli reached his century in a rather dramatic fashion and was literally helped by KL Rahul which has not gone well with a section of sports lovers.
With 19 required to win and exactly as many runs needed for Kohli to reach his century, he opted to deal in boundaries to reach his milestone. Kohli was seen not taking singles to retain strike.
However, KL Rahul later clarified and said, “He was confused, actually. He said it would not look too nice to not take a single, it is still a World Cup match. It’s a big stage and I don’t want to look like I want to get a milestone. But I said we will win the match easily, so if you can get the milestone why not. You must try and he did that in the end and I wasn’t going to run singles.”
Interestingly, this is not the first time that Kohli was allowed by his fellow player to finish the game. Earlier, during the 2014 T20 World Cup semi-final match against South Africa, Captain Cool MS Dhoni also allowed Virat to do the honours.
Dhoni who was leading the team in the tournament, allowed Kohli to finish off the game. Chasing a big of 173, India rode on Kohli’s masterclass to come close to winning. With just 1 run needed off 7 balls, Dhoni chose to play a dot ball.
Regarded as the world’s best finisher, Dhoni could have easily score the winning run. However, the former skipper decided to let Kohli finish the game that left both of them smiling at each other. Later, Kohli completed the chase with a boundary off Dale Steyn.
Even as the Men in Blue lost to Sri Lanka in the final, Kohli won the Player of the Tournament award that year.