The Big Story: Aye aye Captain

Virat Kohli had a monstrous 2016. It didn’t matter if it was Test matches, One Day Internationals or T20s, Kohli was hitting it out of the park. The batsman racked up an aggregate 2,580 runs over the year, and his average across all formats was a stunning 88.96. That’s almost 39 runs more than the next-best competitor. Those are mind-boggling figures, easily marking out 2016 as Kohli’s year.

So of course the Indian skipper went and began 2017 with his 27th ODI century. As if to tip us off on what league he’s playing in, Kohli also matched Sachin Tendulkar’s record of 17 ODI centuries while chasing. Powered by Kohli’s ton and a superb knock from Kedar Jadhav, the Indian men’s cricket team chased down a target of 351, surpassing the largest ODI score England has ever posted in India.

Sunday’s was in some ways doubly important because, even as Indian cricket administration is in turmoil, the men’s team is witnessing the dawn of the Kohli age. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, whose tenure as captain saw India winning trophies across formats, stepped down as captain of the limited overs teams earlier this month, leaving Kohli in charge of the Test, ODI and T20 teams. Over and above his brilliant batting, 2017 now presents Kohli with the opportunity to make his mark as captain.

He’s already excelled as skipper of the Test team, and with India standing at 18 consecutive unbeaten matches, there is potential to truly make history there. But taking over the captaincy in the limited-over formats also gives him enough time to shape this team, which has many many rough edges, into one that will compete for the Champions Trophy this year and develop into a well-oiled machine in time for the World Cup in 2019.

So, while the Supreme Court struggles to figure out how to fix the back-end of Indian cricket, at least we know we have something amazing to look forward to on the pitch.

The Big Scroll

  • Tests, ODIs or T20Is, 2016 was the year where Virat Kohli proved he was the king of all formats, by Sarah Waris. 
  • Virat Kohli averages a monstrous 88.96 in 2016 – almost 39 runs more than the second-highest batsman, by Arka Bhattacharya.
  • Instead of comparing Virat Kohli to other batsmen, let’s enjoy him for what he is, writes Keshava Guha.   
  • There’s no debate about it: Kohli is the world’s best batsman, writes Chetan Narula. 

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Punditry

  1. Vivek Dehejia in Mint insists that if there had not been a cash crunch after the demonetisation move, there wouldn’t have been any impetus to pick up digital payments and move cash out of black and grey economies into a white one. 
  2. Neelanjan Sircar and Bhanu Joshi in the Hindu find the identity-based numbers game alive and thriving in the upper Doab region of Uttar Pradesh. 
  3. “Gandhi is an albatross that the BJP has to wear around its neck for expedient reasons,” writes Mukul Kesavan in the Telegraph. “But it doesn’t have to like it.”
  4. Despite overwhelming institutional, legal and popular demand for the introduction of the Totaliser, which would anonymise booth-level voting and reduce intimidation, the government rejected it, writes Mukulika Banerjee in the Indian Express. 
  5. A leader in the Hindu points out, after the ferry incident in Bihar, that safety on public transport remains a low priority for most governments in India. 

Giggles

Don’t miss

Kanishka Gupta introduces you to Savi Sharma, India’s first woman writer of mass market fiction to sell more than 100,000 copies.

“The Indian publishing world is scratching its head over this phenomenon, and that’s when it isn’t trying to sign Sharma up for a multi-book deal. That’s because it took just about 100 days for a novel titled Everyone Has A Story, written by someone almost no one had heard of, to sell 100,000 copies. The maths is easy – an average of 1,000 copies sold every day.

The book was on Nielsen top ten for 24 weeks, seven of those in the first position, six in the second, and ten in the third. It has almost 1,500 reviews on Amazon. To call it the sleeping hit of 2016 would be an understatement.”