'Superman' Kohli doesn't want the headlines

An internet meme had become quite popular on social media among South Africans in the early stages of the ODI series. It connected Virat Kohli and the now erstwhile South African president Jacob Zuma. There were different variants in terms of the graphics used but they all ended with the same punchline: "South Africa can't dismiss either."

As it turned out, South Africa actually had Zuma removed on February 14 and two days later, Kohli walked off from SuperSport Park with an unbeaten century - his 35th in ODIs - with a 5-1 series win and a couple more trophies for his mantelpiece.

Kohli's 129 in the series finale gave him a scarcely believable series tally of 558 runs at a humble average of 186, the highest aggregate in a bilateral series. By the end of the innings, in which he'd struck 19 fours and showboated two sixes at the end, pockets had been turned out, drawers rifled through. But fresh superlatives to describe his ODI batting genius remained in severe short supply. Ravi Shastri said if it were up to him, he would visit a bookstore and pick up the Oxford dictionary to awkward laughter.

No attempts at humour, silly or otherwise, will do justice to the level of batting Kohli scaled on this tour. In fact, since his double failure in the Cape Town Test defeat at the start of the tour, he hit an imperious 153 at this very venue and then proceeded to play two gems worth 54 and 41 on a spiteful Wanderers track. Then came the ODIs, the Indian captain approached his batting in a semi-meditative state, opting to practice in the nets only twice - before the first ODI in Durban and then before Cape Town - at the only venue he failed in the Tests. That he still cantered his way to a record tally was a testament to his mental strength and powers of visualisation as much as it was to his being in a very deep shade of purple patch.

"I obviously didn't have much time to prepare because I was doing something very important, I was getting married. So three weeks I was totally away from the game, but at the back of my mind there was always this motivation that I just want to be in South Africa. It's embracing being in a difficult situation and that's all we speak about in the change room as well," Kohli said in an otherwise brusque press conference after the series win.

"When things are hostile and when thing are not going your way, you want to go out there in the middle rather than getting extra sleep in the room. It is a very small change of thought but that makes a massive difference because when you go out there, you either want to take up the challenge or you don't and that can only come from here.

"The power of the mind is much greater than practicing hours in the nets. You might practice for two months but if you are not game ready before the game you are going to look like a fool. I rather focus here a lot because I understand that we play so much cricket that you don't necessarily need to go into the nets for hours and hours every day but you would rather tune your head and things can happen on the field which even you don't expect because you just want to be in the battle and deliver for your team. Come what may, in any situation, you just want to be out there and help the team win games. That's always been my mindset and that's actually even my strength as well," he added.

One of the more incredible things about Kohli batting in an ODI is how rarely he disappoints. Batting on 62 in Centurion, moments after creaming a drive off Andile Phehlukwayo through extra cover, Kohli played a low-percentage cut shot to a ball that bounced more and wasn't quite there for the cut. He was beaten. He gave a smile, walked towards the square-leg umpire, muttering away to himself having played so loosely. When he played Phehlukwayo in the next over, he traded the wild slash for timing and picked up two more boundaries with minimal fuss. It is the sheer stupidness of his talent that the simpler virtues of routine and basics aren't spoken of.

In this series, the Indian captain has added a dash of red - a wrist band, an inner t-shirt - to his blue limited-overs ensemble. That coupled with all the runs he scored may have contributed to the 'Superman' comparisons that some of the placards at SuperSport Park seemed to call him. Shastri was bull-headed that his captain was the best batsman in the world. "I've seen him batting across all conditions, in all formats. And it's not just averages, it's the way you get runs, when you get it, and the impact those runs have on what the team does. I would simply say he's the best batsman in the world now," Shastri declared.

But Kohli, who is more Clark Kent than Superman in press conferences, remained unwilling to buy into tags. Weirdly enough, despite a stellar show on an individual and a collective front, he seemed fixated on revisiting wounds from the Centurion past where India dropped the Test series a month ago. Then the defeat had hurt and the reportage clearly irked and today seemed a good day to settle some scores.

"Look as I said, I'm not going to give in to this. I know for a fact that 90 percent of the people didn't give us a chance after two Tests. I was sitting in the same room giving a press conference. So we understand where we've come from. I'm not going to live in a dream land right now and accept all the praise and sit here and feel good about this, because it doesn't matter to me. Honestly it doesn't.

"At this stage, I don't feel like competing with anyone. It is all about how I prepare before the game and what my work ethics are and how I am feeling on game day and my only motivation is to get into that frame of mind. I am not competing with anyone at all. If anything, I only look to help my team in any way I can. And during the course of that, I have mentioned that if you are thinking about the team, special things happen.

"I don't want any tags, I don't want any headlines, I just go out there and do my job, it is upto the people to write what they write, I don't want to be called anything, its my job, I am supposed to do what I am doing and I am not doing anyone a favour as I said, so just want t be in this zone of working as hard as I can and trying to do the best for the team. Everyone is doing a job, they have the freedom to write and say what they want but its very important that I don't change with that because my zone is very simple, it is simply doing hard work and performing for the team."