Eventually it got to Virat Kohli too. He’d spent most of the afternoon waving and gesticulating frantically at his fielders. That is when he wasn’t throwing his hands up in despair or kicking the ground in disgust. At one point, after the latest occasion where one of his teammates had either let a ball slip through their fingers or completely misjudged a catching opportunity, you worried that the Indian captain may hurt himself purely by the ferocity of his animated reactions. And now as he let a ball embarrassingly escape through his legs in the 49th over, he had no one to get annoyed with or throw an angsty stare at. Just himself.
By this stage though the Indians had been on the field for over four hours. They had already exceeded the allotted time to bowl their overs by nearly 40 minutes. It’d been a warm and rather humid day out on the field. It meant there were many additional instances of reserves running out with drinks for both the bowling and the batting teams. Not to forget the occasions where the ball was hit into the stands and had to be subsequently sanitised. And of course, the rather polite ground invasion by two men carrying placards slamming the proposed Adani Loan. The tardiness from the security officials in getting the protestors off the playing area though perhaps summed up the overall sluggishness of the contest, even the entire day’s play.
