WHEN IN OZ, GET YOUR EYE IN

Virat Kohli Has Led The Way In Refashioning India's Top-Order Approach, Which Has Worked Wonders In Australia's Difficult Batting Conditions

- Partha.Bhaduri timesgroup.com

Perth: It was Steve Jobs who once, rather controversially, said, "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards." Virat Kohli, having unexpectedly shed a three-year slump in form to transmute into India's lead batter in the T20 World Cup here, will empathise.

To revitalise his T20 career in these rapidly changing times, Kohli has taken a leaf out of the past. As luck would have it, the conditions in Australia have meant his team has followed suit, underlining the batter's own importance in his post-captaincy cricketing career.

The crowds here, sensing something special was about to unfold, have been following Kohli across Australia since before his innings against Pakistan, which was undoubtedly the knock of the World Cup so far.

Even Australia legend and former India coach Greg Chappell, not always a fan of the T20 format, was so overwhelmed he hailed Kohli's innings as "a song by God".

"Ironically, it was also the innings that legitimised T20 cricket as, dare I say it, an art form, more than any I have seen in the past 15 years," Chappell gushed.

'Art' isn't something one associates with impactful T20 knocks but Kohli's artful-dodger approach to power-hitting is revolutionary.