‘Whatever happened that night will never happen again,’ says Virat Kohli on his iconic MCG knock vs Pakistan

Virat Kohli stunned the cricket world with his majestic match-winning innings against Pakistan during last year’s T20 World Cup in Australia. Chasing 160 on a tricky track against a potent attack, India got reduced to 31 for four at one stage. Virat Kohli, who had come off a brilliant 2023 Asia Cup wherehe ended his century drought in the international with a hundred against Afghanistan, joined hands with Hardik Pandyaas the pair bailed the team out.

While both ensured India stay afloat in thishigh-octane clash, Kohli was the one whochanged gears and took the attack to the opposition. After taking down Shaheen Afridi for a couple of boundaries, Kohli launched two massive sixes againstperhaps Pakistan’s best death bowler – Haris Rauf, one of which made headlines for obvious reasons.

Thanks to his calculative chase, India went on to win the match by four wickets, and Kohli remained unbeaten on 82 off 53 balls – an inning he claimed to be his best across formats.

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Several months later, during an event organised by Sporting brand PUMA, Kohli was asked what went behind the scenes and how he managed to pull that off? The former Indian captain didn’t shy away from accepting that he didn’t have an idea about what happened that night and even went on to claim that anything of that sort is unlikely to happen ever again.

“I was trying to do it before as well but it wasn’t working. The lesson for me was stop using your mind so much because it actually pushes you away from real magic. What happened that night, I can never explain it and it won’t happen ever again,” Kohli said as quoted by India Today.

“I still can’t make any sense of it. That’s a very honest admission. And a lot of people have tried to ask me what were you thinking, how did you plan and I have no answers. The fact of the matter is that I was so much under pressure that my mind had shut off completely by the 12th or 13th over,” he further added.

While Kohli is no new when it comes to chasing huge totals, that too in a crunch game, he said he went blank and doesn’t even remember what coach Rahul Dravid had told him during the middle overs.

“I was going through what I was going through, then I came back in the Asia Cup and I was playing well and I felt like ‘Wow I’m ready to play in this World Cup’. At the 10th over mark, we were 31 for 4 and I had just ran Axar out. I was 12 off 25 balls or something. I remember in the break, Rahul bhai came to me and I don’t remember what he said. I swear and I even told him this as well. I told him, ‘I have no idea what you told me in that break because I was zoned out’,” revealed Kohli.