About a hundred years ago, Pablo Picasso exhibited for the first time his painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. It was soon hailed as a seminal work of modern art. It built on the existing and extended the notion of what was possible.
To compare a six hit by another modern master to a work of art might be stretching it, but that shot by Virat Kohli in the Pune one-day international can be seen as cricket’s Les Demoiselles. Post-modern is here.
We have seen manifestations of modernity before. T20 has brought into our consciousness such innovations as the dilscoop , the uppercut, the switch hit and the de Villiers specials. The 360-degree batsman is a familiar figure, as he hits the ball to untenanted areas in the field guided not so much by inventive footwork as by speed of thought and hands. The traditional coach might say, “How terrible, look where your feet are,” to which the modern batsman would reply, “Yes, but look where the ball has gone.”
Not many innovations have contributed to the aesthetics of the game. The switch hit remains an ugly shot; the reverse sweep is unlikely to inspire poets.
Such strokes merely take us on another route to run-making, but it is not the most scenic nor indeed the least effortful.
Around the turn of the 20th century, an Indian rewrote the rules of batsmanship by playing the leg glance. Till then, if the ball came to the batsman on the off side he played it on the off side. That was the gentleman’s code. But Ranjitsinhji changed all that using supple wrists and a quick eye to send the ball flying to fine leg. Suddenly, a whole new world was opened up.
Tom Hayward, one of the greats, wrote thus in his manual on the game, Cricket : “We had got into a groove out of which the daring of a revolutionary alone could move us. The Indian Prince has proven himself an innovator. He recognises no teaching which is not progressive, and frankly he has tilted, by his play, at our stereotyped creations.”
If Ranji brought into the game an element from the outside, Kohli showed in Pune that existing techniques were sufficient to take the game to another level. No codes need be broken. He demonstrated once again that there were still unexplored areas in classical batsmanship. And that the lazy cry that we had exhausted everything it had to offer was just that.
Watch that shot again. Chris Woakes bowls short, Kohli goes back and for a split second, almost undetectable in real time, seems to be preparing to punch to cover. But it is a slower delivery, giving him just enough time to change his mind and swing it with an almost straight bat high over mid on. The extra bounce works to his advantage as he swivels on his backfoot, turns his hip around, takes the ball higher on the bat than he might have liked to, but still strikes beautifully because he has got the timing right and his balance is perfect. That is extraordinary skill.
Look at the front foot as he finishes. It lands with the lightness of a ballet dancer’s. There is no strain, no hurried repositioning; it is as if the batsman has merely allowed the energy to flow from his feet to his hands through his body and lost none of it in the act of playing the shot. Excited commentators called it many things: a short arm jab, hit with a straight bat wide of mid on, a backfoot punch. All true. And all horribly inadequate.
You can give some credit to the modern bats, some to the modern fitness regimen, some to that magic when even the worst of us are capable of one moment of genius, but above all it is a tribute to Kohli’s flair, self-confidence and game awareness. Made greater still by his sticking to the textbook. You will not find this shot in any textbook, but you will find all the elements that went into it there: footwork, timing, straight bat, backfoot play, transfer of body weight.
As soon as Kohli hit that six I received a query on my phone: “How is that even possible?” The apparent impossibility of getting everything right in a split second adds to the enjoyment. Every time the journeyman player gets above himself, he only needs to remember that shot to come down to earth.
Sometimes understanding extinguishes pleasure. Sometimes it is enough to say he did it. We saw it. It happened. Romantic poets often spend a lifetime awaiting the insight that makes meaning clear. Kohli may or may not believe that he can do it again. But unlike the poets he is not going to let that rule his life. It is possible, and that’s enough.
Kohli has built on the existing and extended the notion of what is possible with orthodox batsmanship while opening the door to the post-modern. Not an insignificant message to convey with one six.
