At the Wankhede Stadium, his home ground, Rohit Sharma won the toss and slammed a 29-ball 47 with four fours and four sixes. Once he fell, Shubman Gill and Virat Kohli settled down, adding 93 for the second wicket before Gill retired hurt for a 65-ball 79.

Shreyas Iyer joined Kohli, who soon reached fifty for the eighth time – this includes his two hundreds – in the ongoing World Cup, in his tenth innings.

This is now a world record for most fifty-plus scores in a single edition of the World Cup: Kohli surpassed the previous count of seven, set by Sachin Tendulkar in 2003 and equalled by Shakib Al Hasan in 2019.

As the temperature hovered well over 30°C and the humidity touched 50 percent, Kohli continued, with Shreyas Iyer in tow, as Tim Southee came to bowl the 30th over.

After Iyer leg-glanced the first ball for a single, Southee took the pace off the second ball. It was, after a slower ball that had helped him snare Rohit earlier in the day.

Kohli, however, was equal to the task. Having read the change of pace, he stepped out, and met the ball down the pitch. For most batters, even that might not have got enough momentum, but Kohli used his steely bottom-wrist into play, and the ball disappeared over the mid-wicket fence for six. “He’s shifting gears now,” exclaimed Ravi Shastri on air.

At the time of writing, India were 248-1 after 35 overs with Kohli on 80 and Iyer on 38.

Watch Virat Kohli hit Tim Southee for six:

 

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