Great article on Virat Kohli

[uttermost]

Just now, tennisluvr said:

Okay I will lift this thread after the SA tour. 

and do what? if Virat does well, at best you can do is gloat about it. You can't really mock me for getting it wrong, because I refuse to place bets on Virat Kohli either way.

I prefer betting on an unknown horse. That's how I trade.

[tennisluvr]

2 minutes ago, uttermost said:

and do what? if Virat does well, at best you can do is gloat about it. You can't really mock me for getting it wrong, because I refuse to place bets on Virat Kohli either way.

I prefer betting on an unknown horse. That's how I trade.

Not lifting for you specifically. 

[uttermost]

1 minute ago, tennisluvr said:

Not lifting for you specifically. 

okay.

[dasara_bullodu]

12 hours ago, tennisluvr said:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2017/dec/08/virat-kohli-sachin-tendulkar-india-cricket-space-fleet

disturbing thing happened last month. Sachin Tendulkar, the most unapproachable personage in cricket, was suddenly eager to be interviewed. Tendulkar is currently promoting a documentary film called Sachin: A Billion Dreams. At moments like these The Talent often finds itself wheeled out, grudgingly, for a 10-minute round-table clichefest.

This was different though. This time Tendulkar was jarringly up for it. Not only was he available. Sachin seemed to have picked me out specifically to interview him, insisting above all on this detail. Yes, his people confirmed, Sachin is available for an exclusive one on one. How much time did I need? Where would be convenient? Sachin is flexible. Just say the word.

Naturally, this was quite upsetting and I immediately felt both protective and nostalgic. For as long as I can remember simply asking to see Sachin in person would have elicited the same response – a burst of disbelieving laughter down the phone – as Patrick Bateman calling Dorsia and demanding a table for two the same night. And rightly so. Nobody wants an available, human-scale Sachin. He’s a part of the firmament, out there, not down here. He’s like Nigel Tufnell’s collection of guitars in Spinal Tap. You don’t even look at Sachin.

Sachin Tendulkar: ‘When I was injured I could not sleep at night’

 

 

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Happily, before long the world began to right itself. A few days later an email arrived from a more terse-sounding Sachin-affiliate explaining he would be available only on the phone. This was more like it. Doors were closing, velveteen VIP ropes being hastily re-erected. Relieved, a little tearful, mainly I was just happy for Sachin.

A week later confirmation came that Sachin wouldn’t even be on the phone. He would now be interviewed only by email, an A-list ruse that presumably involves a PA or a scribe, or an interview-wallah tapping away while the man himself consorts with the illuminati overlords on Mars. As I dashed off a fond, happy reply “Under no circumstances would we ... ” it felt as though all was right again. I never believed them, Sach. You’ve still got it. You’re still big. It’s just existing inside a sealed, celebrity demi-god bubble that got small.

The reason for mentioning this and dwelling on it so long is that Tendulkar has also lingered in the background of the achievements of Virat Kohli in the past six months, a run of exhilarating batting form that reached a fresh high this week with another double century against Sri Lanka in Delhi.

Against England in Pune earlier this year, Kohli reeled off a match-winning hundred so fine it made you feel drunk just watching it

Admittedly, Sri Lanka have been poor in India and the last Test was more notable for the spectacle of players vomiting on the outfield as the Delhi air, which kills thousands each year, descended on the Feroz Shah Kotla like an icy, strangulating hand.

But Kohli is in the middle of something extraordinary, performing at an all-format plateau beyond the reach of any other player in the current era. The Test rankings have Kohli in second place, 45 points behind Steve Smith, another player on an astonishing run. If Kohli nudges ahead of Smith in January he will, all things being equal, become the first to occupy the No1 spot simultaneously in Tests, ODIs and T20s.

Small beans perhaps but a fair reflection of Kohli’s feats over the last three years. Never mind best in the world, such is his record, his dash, his style it is probably time to have that other conversation, the one about greatness, a hierarchy of brilliance that transcends the age.

 

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 Virat Kohli celebrates his double century against Sri Lanka. Photograph: Altaf Qadri/AP

As with so many good things, this started in earnest with a miserable English summer. In 34 Tests since India’s 2014 tour, Kohli averages 66.92 with 14 hundreds, seven of them outside India. In the same period he averages 65.52 in ODIs with 13 hundreds, while also rattling along at a ridiculous 61.50 in T20s. Kohli has five double hundreds in his past 16 Tests. He averages 83 in 31 ODIs in the same period. Nobody has ever batted like this across three international formats. This is a cricketer drowning in honey.

It is hard to process such brilliance at the best of times. In terms of modern-day Indian batting you keep coming back to Tendulkar, who was for so long an object of such unconditional veneration there seemed no space left for any more genius, no air in the room, no superlative unspent.

Comparisons are always skewed but they are also illuminating. Tendulkar already looks like a presence from an entirely different age, a strangely mute, devotional version of Indian sporting supremacy, a cricketer who seemed to carry around with him his own square of light, a clear pure space. By comparison, Kohli is a strikingly secular figure, entirely unrestrained, striding out to bat like the handsome, young, new commander of the space fleet.

Watching him is always a riot, cricket played out at an astonishing pitch of fluency and aggression, an otherworldly talent expressed right to its outer limits. Against England in Pune at the start of the year he reeled off a match-winning hundred so fine it made you feel drunk just watching it, orthodox shots played with a bat that seemed to be exhilaratingly alive, to flex and twang with a kind of animate intelligence.

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At this stage the only real argument around Kohli’s greatness is the state of the game around him. For some his astonishing returns are evidence of the low standard of Test cricket, double hundreds burped out almost without noticing against bitty, underpowered attacks. This is more than a little unfair. Tendulkar made his runs – at a higher career average – against some of the best spin and pace bowling the sport has seen but there has always been filler around too. And talent will keep on coming. It is the responsibility of cricket not to gauge and rank and downplay brilliance but simply to make itself worthy of it, to provide a fitting theatre for such extraordinary gifts.

For Kohli the chance is there to end any lasting debate about his status in the coming months. In 2018, India will play Tests in South Africa, England and Australia. That English summer already looks like the final frontier, Kohli’s humiliating failure on these shores the only blight on his record.

Beware, homogenised right-arm fast-medium bowlers and flat late-summer pitches. Kohli, the obsessive, the workaholic, all gleaming will-to-power will hurl himself into righting this and into completing his own four-year cycle of unanswerable and undeniable greatness.

 

 

 

Lol post ... too many morons writing news paper articles now-a-days

[tennisluvr]

15 minutes ago, dasara_bullodu said:

 

Lol post ... too many morons writing news paper articles now-a-days

You should write one too then. 

[Demigod]

12 hours ago, tennisluvr said:

Both are great in their own way, but I think VK is hitting a peak never seen before in cricket. 

Sachin  sure a legend...I saw some unbelievable innings from VK...he won games for India from a position where it was almost impossible to win..if it was once may be we can say he got lucky...but he did many times... now the other guys will start saying poor bowling etc etc...but there have been lot of changes done to cricketing rules like number of fielders, number of power play overs...to make it an even contest between bat and ball... earlier it used to be 15 overs of Power play where only 3 fielders allowed out side circle...imagine if that rule is still there...  

[Kool_SRG]

6 minutes ago, Demigod said:

Sachin  sure a legend...I saw some unbelievable innings from VK...he won games for India from a position where it was almost impossible to win..if it was once may be we can say he got lucky...but he did many times... now the other guys will start saying poor bowling etc etc...but there have been lot of changes done to cricketing rules like number of fielders, number of power play overs...to make it an even contest between bat and ball... earlier it used to be 15 overs of Power play where only 3 fielders allowed out side circle...imagine if that rule is still there...  

Only first 15 overs lo undedi mundu mandatory only 2 not 3 fielders.. Ippudu spread across 50 overs.

1-10 with only 2 fielders out side the circle.

10-40 with only 4 fielders out side the circle.

40-50 with max 5 fielders out side the circle.

 

2 Separate balls from either end..

[dakumangalsingh]

1 hour ago, tennisluvr said:

You failed to answer an elementary question, where is it that I started comparing Sachin and Virat on this thread? Can't you go back and read your own posts, or do you have an inability to accept something that you don't necessarily agree with? 

nee post lo ney vundii ankul, tendulkar fans ni chidainchadaniki post esinav ani telsu.

 

 

title bhi change chesinav kada

[tennisluvr]

2 minutes ago, dakumangalsingh said:

nee post lo ney vundii ankul, tendulkar fans ni chidainchadaniki post esinav ani telsu.

 

 

title bhi change chesinav kada

Athi teliva, chaa. 

Change chese avasaram ledu, meeru argue chestharu ani posukune type kaadu

[uttermost]

13 minutes ago, Demigod said:

Sachin  sure a legend...I saw some unbelievable innings from VK...he won games for India from a position where it was almost impossible to win..if it was once may be we can say he got lucky...but he did many times... now the other guys will start saying poor bowling etc etc...but there have been lot of changes done to cricketing rules like number of fielders, number of power play overs...to make it an even contest between bat and ball... earlier it used to be 15 overs of Power play where only 3 fielders allowed out side circle...imagine if that rule is still there...  

the point is simple ba.

Kohli is extremely passionate, disciplined, and focused, and used the opportunity and facilities provided by BCCI to become an awesome batsman. But he's not a natural strokemaker, like Tendulkar is.

Just watch Tendulkar bat at 16, and watch Kohli bat at 23 in the world cup. see the difference in confidence. Tendulkar is pure brilliance at such a young age. Something Indian cricket did not witness at that time. Kohli wins more matches, but people don't care anymore.

anyway, Kohli lost all the world cups so far, hasn't he? 

ofcourse when Kohli beats Tendulkar's records, everybody's gonna hail him as one of the best. Why the hurry. let him finish his career no.

[uttermost]

I even saw Kohli bat in under 19 world cup in 2007/08 I think. I watched two matches, one in which he made 95, I think against SA.

I didn't think much of him either.

such impressions stay. mainly because I stopped watching cricket, and hardly follow the scores too now.

[Demigod]

7 minutes ago, Kool_SRG said:

Only first 15 overs lo undedi mundu mandatory only 2 not 3 fielders.. Ippudu spread across 50 overs.

1-10 with only 2 fielders out side the circle.

10-40 with only 4 fielders out side the circle.

40-50 with max 5 fielders out side the circle.

 

2 Separate balls from either end..

ade bhayya 15 overs only 2 fielders imagine what current batsmen can do to bowlers with their 360 degree batting skills...

[uttermost]

Kohli plays like a workhorse. labouring, calculating his strokes, like a robot.

Tendulkar, atleast until he got injured in 1999, played like a king. ofcourse he failed more often than Kohli did, because he took more risks???

after 2000, Tendulkar was a different player altogether. We won't talk about that.

[uttermost]

2 minutes ago, Demigod said:

ade bhayya 15 overs only 2 fielders imagine what current batsmen can do to bowlers with their 360 degree batting skills...

bhayya. game has progressed bhayya. whatever magic current batsmen can conjure up, doesn't diminish their predecessors.

 

[Demigod]

4 minutes ago, uttermost said:

the point is simple ba.

Kohli is extremely passionate, disciplined, and focused, and used the opportunity and facilities provided by BCCI to become an awesome batsman. But he's not a natural strokemaker, like Tendulkar is.

Just watch Tendulkar bat at 16, and watch Kohli bat at 23 in the world cup. see the difference in confidence. Tendulkar is pure brilliance at such a young age. Something Indian cricket did not witness at that time. Kohli wins more matches, but people don't care anymore.

anyway, Kohli lost all the world cups so far, hasn't he? 

ofcourse when Kohli beats Tendulkar's records, everybody's gonna hail him as one of the best. Why the hurry. let him finish his career no.

na point kuda ade VK even though not naturally gifted say like rohit vadi pattudala tho he became the person he is today and set the bar high..sachin also lost all the world cups untill we won one in 2011.. ala ante yuvi 3 world cups win ayyadu shall we say he is better than sachin n VK.. nenu Sachin technique or commitment ni judge cheyatle.. Sachin legend..but VK agility athleticism the way he reads the game pacing an innings avi anni next level...