Look in the mirror before blaming Virat Kohli and calling him selfish for chasing a World Cup century at all cost

You shouldn’t preach what you don’t practice… easier said than done, for obvious reasons. The former is not that difficult.

The latter needs perseverance, patience and a lot of guts. By nature, human beings are never satisfied. We always strive for more. In that constant strive for excellence, there is an ever-growing desire to reach milestones. We often don’t celebrate 95. We rue missing out on cent percent by just five. Ask any student in India.

They rarely get the chance to feel good about their achievements. The hollowness of the missing two is far greater than the shine of 98 in their report card. It’s a vicious design that society follows. It’s the same for cricket. The same for ‘God’ Sachin Tendulkar. The same for ‘King’ Virat Kohli. The same for everyone.

Sunil Gavaskar’s legacy would not have been any less if he hadn’t become the first cricketer to 10,000 Test runs. Tendulkar would have still been the closest to Sir Don Bradman if he hadn’t scored his 100th international century. Again… easier to preach. For the entire duration of that Pakistan tour of India back in 1987, Gavaskar was reminded about the landmark wherever he went. It sort of became a necessity for others.

The situation was no different – perhaps more claustrophobic due to the mushrooming of social media and electronic media – for Tendulkar when he was ‘stuck’ with 99 international centuries for a long time.

The 97 in the World Cup final against Sri Lanka in 2011 was the best knock of Gautam Gambhir’s career but he is still often poked at for that charge down the track to Thisara Perera. He is schooled for losing poles with a high-risk shot instead of just taking it easy to get to that hundred. It wouldn’t have made any difference to the outcome of the match.

In fact, if anything, Gambhir was doing the right thing by not letting the game drift and give a sniff to Sri Lanka but then again, 97 is counted as a half-century, far less than the imaginary pride of a hundred. There are countless examples of our obsession with milestones but before the social media generation dismisses this as pravachan, let us get to the point.

Kohli proved that he is mortal after all by making a desperate dash to reach three figures in a World Cup match against Bangladesh in Pune. Realising that there was no way India were going to lose the match, Kohli decided to give himself a different challenge. He kept the strike for 19 straight deliveries to reach his century.

The way Kohli was playing, one could guess that it wasn’t pre-planned. It can’t be. It probably only occurred to him when he hit a six off Hasan Mahmud to reach 80. The equation was simple: 20 for his hundred, 20 for India’s win. Since there were 11.1 overs remaining, Kohli decided to go for it.

It was not easy by any means. He was helped by his batting partner KL Rahul, who made Kohli believe that refusing a single or two was fine as long as he was getting to his century. Who better than Rahul to understand the pain of missing out on a well-deserved century? He was on his haunches after hitting a delightful six over covers that won the India match against Australia. The reason? He wanted that to go for a four so that he was left with 1 run to attempt a six and get to his century.

Kohli needed 19 deliveries, had to refuse three singles and needed one off the last ball for three overs in a row to finally hit a six and get to his landmark – the 48th ODI century that took him just one step shy from Tendulkar’s world record of 49. Was it the right thing to do for a player of Kohli’s stature? Was getting to a century so important that he forgot it was a World Cup match in front of his home crowd?

What message would it send to youngsters learning the ropes of a team sport like cricket? All these questions are legit. But before pointing a finger, ask yourself the same and try to find a solution to this ruthless hunger for milestones.

We (most of us, certainly not everyone) do not have the right to question someone doing a little bit extra to reach a milestone when that is all we demand every time. Our parameters are always the number of centuries, number of five-wicket hauls, number of this, number of that, stats and more stats.

Kohli’s last World Cup century was against Pakistan way back in 2015. He got five fifties in 2019 and missed out on a well-deserved hundred in the match against Australia barely a couple of weeks ago. He surely wasn’t going to let an opportunity of notching up his third World Cup century go by that easily. Yes, so deeply rooted is the milestone obsession that it gets to even the best, and Kohli is the best.

And mind you, it gets doubly difficult when you are Kohli. His position in the Indian side was questioned when he couldn’t score a century for three years. In between his 70th international ton and his 71st, Kohli scored 26 half-centuries, 12 of those were over 70, six of those over 80 but the chatter was always around the missing century. He may have been far from his best but those 70s and 80s were good enough to win India matches on most occasions, yet certainly not enough to please the lust for milestones.

And this is not restricted to centuries alone. Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory? Humans are motivated to fulfil their needs in a hierarchical order and whenever one need is fulfilled, the next arises and it never stops. In Kohli’s prime, even centuries were not enough. Is he not good enough to score a double century? Bang came the question when Kohli, who was scoring runs for fun could not get daddy hundreds the first five years of his Test career.

His answer came in July 2016 when he smashed his maiden double century against the West Indies. And in a span of 17 months, he scored five more to shatter one record after another.

But were we satisfied? Will we ever be? No. So, before you blame Kohli for being selfish because he went after a century in a match that was already won, hold a mirror in front of you.