Virat Kohli couldn’t believe his eyes. Or for that matter, those of Richard Illingworth’s, forcing him to review the umpire’s decision. Standing in the middle of the Old Trafford field staring unblinking at the giant screen, Kohli re-watched the Trent Boult ball that had shaped sharply back in and clipped him on the pads, which a few moments ago had raised Illingworth’s finger for the first time.

In the review played out on the screen, however, the projection of the ball’s movement barely clipped the top of the bail—umpire’s call. Kohli shifted his intense stare to Illingworth, even as the umpire raised his finger for the second time. As he walked off the field, out for 1 in his second successive World Cup semi-final, the Indian captain tossed his bat in the air and cussed his luck. After 2.4 overs, India was now 5 for two; the world’s number one and two ODI batsmen—Kolhi and Rohit Sharma, dismissed in the space of seven balls.

Luck, though, had played no role in the fall of Sharma, scorer of 647 runs at an average of 92 in this World Cup. New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson would like to believe that it wasn’t anything but strategy; more specifically, the strategy of tossing the second new ball to Matt Henry and not the scalper of 17 wickets in this World Cup, Lockie Ferguson. Henry tends to be rather one dimensional with his length (short) and line (outside off), but on a wicket that was covered all night, he was just the kind of bowler who could cause discomfort.

Henry did, getting a nick off Sharma with just his third delivery and India’s start was eerily similar to New Zealand on the first day of this two-day international. But on Tuesday, after the Black Caps had lost opener Martin Guptill early, new man Williamson and Henry Nicholls soaked up the pressure with their spongy bats, ensuring that the next wicket fell only in the 19th over. Even if it came at the cost of scoring the lowest powerplay total of this World Cup, a meagre 27 runs.

Kohli too would have had a similar plan. But neither Henry nor Boult let him settle into a rhythm. The first ball he faced, off Henry in the second over, he edged just short of second slip. And when Boult ran in from the other end, Kohli twice played and missed at deliveries moving away, before Boult unleashed his sleight of hand. He brought one back in and made Kohli fall over at the crease. And within three balls, India would all but fall out of the match.

KL Rahul had watched this carnage from 22 yards away. That too can have an unsettling effect; for when Henry ran in to bowl his second over—with three slips and five fielders in catching positions—the very first ball tickled Rahul’s bat and landed in Rod Latham’s gloves. From this position of 5 for three after 3.1 overs—and especially due to India’s hit-and-miss middle order—sponging up the pressure seemed an improbable task. Promptly the team found itself on 24 for four at the 10-over mark, the new low in this World Cup’s powerplays.

Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya, both batsmen capable of supreme destruction, tried to do what Williamson and Ross Taylor did in New Zealand’s batting innings. But the temptation of not smacking left-arm spinner Mitchell Santner proved too much off an itch, and both perished off Santner’s bowling in the same fashion—a slog sweep down deep midwicket’s throat—and on the same score, 32.

When Pandya walked off the field, India was 92 for six and perhaps no one on the ground believed that Kohli’s side stood a chance in this semi-final. Except the incoming batsman Ravindra Jadeja that is. Jadeja has been in the news all week long, taking to Twitter to criticise the commentator Sanjay Manjrekar for calling him a ‘bits and pieces player’. And if Kohli is to be believed, that perhaps even gave him the motivation to play what Kohli found to be Jadeja’s finest ODI knock.

“After what happened over the last one week, He was quite ready to just get on to the park, to be honest,” Kohli said later. He was. Off just the sixth delivery he faced, India’s No.8 batsman danced down the track and slapped Jimmy Neesham’s delivery over long-on for six. This was in the 33rd over and that six was India’s first boundary in 75 balls. A large reason for India’s run-strangulation in the middle overs was due to Santner, who found himself with figures of 6 overs, 2 maidens, 7 runs and 2 wickets at one point. So Jadeja went after him too.

In the 39th over, he whacked Santner over wide long-on for another six to bring India’s equation down to exactly 100 runs from 67 balls. With MS Dhoni playing the anchor at the other end, India’s hopes of making the semi-final were not all lost. In the process of keeping hopes alive, Jadeja got to his first ODI fifty since 2014, which he celebrated with a swooshing bat and a roar towards the commentary box, presumably at just one man.

But the asking rate was getting steeper by the over and there was only one man scoring the big runs, reflected in this statistic: When Jadeja and Dhoni brought up their 100-run stand, the former had scored 69 of those runs. Their 108-run stand was the highest for the seventh wicket partnership in World Cup history. But in the end, it was not enough.

When Jadeja departed, with 13 balls to go and 31 runs needed, it was time for Dhoni to step up or step out. He did both. The first ball of the penultimate over, short and wide and bowled by Ferguson, was smashed over point for six by Dhoni. But when the following dot ball forced him to run a hard double two balls later, he was run out by an incredible Guptill direct-hit. This time it was Dhoni’s turn to not believe his eyes.

First Published: Jul 11, 2019 00:02 IST