It wasn't Kohli at his peak, yet it was peak Kohli

It began as a sequence as Kohli-esque as possible. He watched the ball on to his bat, turned it behind square, calibrated for a two, ran very hard, made the perfect turn, sprinted back for the second.

- Rahul Bhattacharya

KOHLI RAISES THE BAR WITH 50TH ODI TON IN HIS IDOL'S BACKYARD

Except now, Virat Kohli, having completed an astonishing 50th one-day century, kept going towards the clubhouse, jumped to the skies, fell to his knees, let his bat drop to the grass, and his head in his hands, took off his helmet, his gloves, stood up and soaked the hell out of the moment.

He bowed towards Sachin Tendulkar, the hero whose record he had broken – smashed might be more accurate, given that he did it in 183 innings fewer. To Anuskha Sharma he blew a kiss. When he had gathered himself he acknowledged the rest of the Wankhede, which remained standing and chanting and applauding. It would be a while till the capacity crowd sat down again. They included David Beckham, Madhuri Dixit and Rajinikanth.

As Kohli prepared to resume, one could feel the exhaustion from the milestone. But then to watch Kohli is to feel tired on his behalf – I’m not sure he does it for himself.

All those sprinted runs – nearly 8,000 of them, in fact, in one-day cricket alone, if you remove the fours and sixes from his aggregate, and also ignore all the thousands of runs he has for his partners.