Even when absent, Kohli grabs spotlight

So brightly does Virat Kohli’s force of personality shine down on any cricket campaign in which he and his India team take part, he exerts a gravitational pull on attention even when he’s not occupying centre stage.

And rarely has the sporting leader of the world’s largest democracy been more conspicuously absent than the current Test match against Australia at Ranchi – the home city of his captaincy predecessor, MS Dhoni – during which he’s been off the field for all but three-and-a-quarter hours across three full days of play.

Yet Kohli, who batted for just 37 minutes today to score six runs before edging another catch to the slips cordon, emerged as both the talking point and the flashpoint of a day that should have belonged to far more worthy stories.

Like the flawless batting of his teammate Cheteshwar Pujara who remained unbowed at the crease for the entire three sessions to score an unbeaten 130, or the scarcely imagined but always likely return to prominence of Australia’s reborn fast bowler Patrick Cummins.

But wherever Kohli goes the limelight invariably follows, and so it was that his first public appearance during game time since suffering a strain to his right shoulder in a fielding mishap midway through day one set eyebrows lifting and social media channels frothing.

His appearance on the team dressing room balcony to deliver a bout of exaggerated applause when Australia unsuccessfully called for a review of an lbw shout against Pujara, and burned their last available DRS card of that 80-over stint in the process, suggesting another stirring of an already simmering pot.

One brought to the boil when Kohli’s rival captain Steve Smith contravened the Test cricket’s playing conditions by looking to his teammates in the grandstand upon being given out lbw on a tense final day at Bengaluru last week.

And then turned up several notches by Kohli’s subsequent unproved claim that it was the latest in a series of systematic breaches of the rules by Australia in relation to the DRS.

If Kohli’s reappearance, dressed in full combat kit as he remained ready to join the fray should a wicket fall, was designed to provoke a response from the opposition team in addition to the trolls and troglodytes, then it seemed to miss its mark.

“I know he came out and clapped, I don’t know if it was directed at anyone in particular but that’s the way he’s been playing this series,” said Australia’s Bupa Support Team Assistant Coach David Saker, who was seated barely 10 metres from the India captain when he emerged from behind the smoked glass that had shielded him from view for almost two days.

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“It’s a really cut-throat series for everyone and … there’s a lot of pressure on him at the moment.

“I don’t think it was directed at anything, I just think when you lose your two reviews it’s a bit of a relief to the opposition and he probably just showed that.”

Kohli's long-awaited arrival in the middle came with the resumption of the second session, and the tabloid incident that was bound to blow up came 36 minutes into Kohli’s 37-minute innings, when Pujara flicked Cummins towards the midwicket rope where Glenn Maxwell executed the same sort of headlong dive to prevent a boundary as India's captain had attempted in a similar spot on day one.

With the Australian sticking the landing slightly better to avoid injury as well as reducing a near certain boundary to an all-run three, then picking himself up from his tumble with a rub of his shoulder and a smile as if to make a point about Kohli’s mishap.

Which subsequently – perhaps because Kohli was dismissed from the very next ball when he might have been resting comfortably at the non-striker’s end but for the clever save – escalated into a nationwide, potentially global debate as to the moral justification of Maxwell’s ‘mockery’.

Reaching its high (more likely low) point during the tea break when it was scrutinised forensically for more than five minutes by a TV panel that included ex-Test batter VVS Laxman, after which viewers were urged to share their views on ‘Australia’s mockery of Kohli’s injury’.

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“All of the players are aware of it, and whatever they (the Australians) are doing, we take it as a sporting thing,” was the assessment proffered by India opener Murali Vijay at the end of day three that sees India 6-360 and 91 runs in arrears.

“And there's going to be a second innings, so hopefully they can take it that way.”

But while that might all have seemed a needless curiosity in isolation, it was but another loose thread in the unravelling fabric that has cloaked Kohli since he sustained the injury.

Initial reports that the shoulder problem was minor and he would be back on the field within an hour were revealed as redundant when he spent half of day one in the dressing room, before being sent for scans that evening.

It was an exercise that itself heaped mockery upon mystery when the prognosis that India’s most revered contemporary cricketer would require up to 15 days rest to recover from a strained ligament was found to have come from a hospital orderly, enjoying his own 15 of fame.

But contributing nothing more than fiction to the ongoing enigma.

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The India team then moved to clarify the details of Kohli’s ailment, their official media statement ruling it simply a strain that carried with it “no serious concerns” and that ongoing treatment would help him “participate in the rest of the match”.

That was also the message contained in a video post on the BCCI’s Twitter feed next morning that showed Kohli descending the stairs from the team dressing room and heading to the players’ on-field warm-up with the accompanying message as simple as it was unambiguous: ‘captain returns’, it heralded.

Except that Kohli took no part in said warm-up, and his ‘return’ was limited to a couple of casual conversations, hands in pockets, with members of the support staff while his teammates limbered up, and then a lengthy group address before he returned to the dressing room.

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From where he did not emerge for the entirety of day two.

So when Kohli was again reported missing from India’s on-field stretching and running routines on the third morning, it was assumed he was again confined to the sick bay with no formal word to disavow such speculation.

But closer inspection revealed the 28-year-old undertaking a lengthy net session at the expansive training compound adjoining the impressive new stadium at Ranchi, testing his damaged joint against the wily wrist spin of his coach (and India’s most successful Test bowler) Anil Kumble.

And under the clinical gaze of a team India official, who clearly held vastly superior medical credentials to the faux medico quoted so authoritatively in the previous morning’s copy of The Telegraph (Ranchi and Jamshedpur edition).

Kohli showed little discomfort when defending and advancing to Kumble’s spin, admittedly a more gentle iteration thereof than when he was in his playing pomp, and the only outward suggestion the skipper was wounded came when he attempted a full-blooded cut shot or an extravagant lofted drive.

At those moments his bottom hand would be removed from the bat handle, indicating the limited range of movement that Kohli had at his disposal due to the ‘strain’ and the heavy strapping that was beneath his half-sleeved training shirt.

Given that auxiliary members of Australia’s squad Ashton Agar, Mitchell Swepson and Marcus Stoinis were training just three practice pitches away from Kohli’s hit-out, the message would surely have been relayed to the tourists’ brains trust that reach was likely to prove the rival captain’s Achilles heel.

Or his soft shoulder, as the most vocal believe the Australians were suggesting.