Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting sang praises of India batter Virat Kohli’s six off Pakistani pacer, Haris Rauf, during the Super 12s match between the two arch-rivals at MCG and said that the six will go down as one of the most remembered shots in T20 World Cup history.
Kohli played an amazing knock of 82* in 53 balls against Pakistan as he single-handedly took the Indian team past the finishing line in a thrilling encounter in Melbourne.
India needed 28 runs in the last 8 balls when Virat Kohli unleashed an astonishing shot off Haris Rauf. Kohli stood tall on his toes as he hit Rauf’s length delivery over the long-on boundary for a six. He then hit Rauf for another six, this time over the fine leg with the ball flicked off his pads into the crowd.
Having exhausted all his fast-bowling options, Babar Azam had to give the ball to Mohammad Nawaz the left-arm spinner with 16 required off the last 6 balls.
Nawaz picked two wickets in the over, but Kohli hit him for a six off a waist-high full-toss which was called a no-ball. Then he ran three off the free hit, which ricocheted to the third man after hitting the stumps.
In the end, R Ashwin hit the final ball over mid-off to win the game for India.
“I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. It's going to go down as one of the most remembered and talked about shots probably in - I won't say white-ball cricket history - but certainly T20 World Cup history," Ponting told the T20 World Cup website.
Kohli himself had admitted that he had to find those two sixes off Rauf to keep his team in the game.
"They would have known, having done the calculations, that it was going to have to be the spinner that was going to bowl the last over. That just goes to show how important the last two balls of the 19th over were. They had to get boundaries on those two or the game was done. What had sort of happened in the over previous as well, Virat was setting up for something that was going to be full.
You're setting up something for that full, that he could smack back down the ground off the front foot. He was almost half through his swing and then the length is not there, and he was good enough to hold his shape and find the middle and hit it far enough to get it not just over the fence," he said referring to Kohli's moment of magic,” Ponting added.
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Ponting said on a lighter note that he never attempted what Kohli executed in his illustrious career.
"I didn't do it. I mean, it wasn't on the back foot, it was just a backfoot length ball. He sort of loaded up, his footwork was quite neutral when he hit it,” he said.
The 3-time World Cup-winning Australian batter said that it was Virat Kohli’s prime fitness that allowed him to hit a shot like that.
"He stood up on top of the bounce of the ball, and there's a certain degree of skill involved in that but you've got to look at the strength involved in a shot like that as well. All that strength came through his core. You've got a steady base and the power to create and play that shot from there, comes through your core. We've seen him with his cricket gear off, he's pretty fit.
"There's a lot of other players that just wouldn't have been strong enough through their core to do something like that but he's one of the guys that can," he concluded.
(PTI inputs)
