The anatomy of 'that' Kohli six

"White-ball batting today is about hand-eye coordination, skill and power and that shot had all of that in it," exclaims Julian Wood, the former Hampshire cricketer and the current power-hitting coach of the Punjab Kings in the IPL, in a chat with Cricbuzz. Even Wood, who travels the world to teach cricketers the science of six-hitting, has been left gobsmacked by Kohli's innings against Pakistan at the MCG in the ongoing T20 World Cup. Kohli hit four sixes on Sunday night but one particular hit stood out for Wood and needed multiple viewing to dissect the bio-mechanics of it.

Sunday evening was already significant in many other ways. Then Kohli pulled off 'that' shot with 28 required off 8, against the the opposition's best bowler on the night. It was a very good delivery from Haris Rauf. Wasim Akram would disagree the need for the slower ball when the speedier version at the same length had proved unhittable through the night. But Rauf went for the deception and it was a fair ploy to go to when you are regularly cranking it up to 90mph.

The ball was on the hard length and angling into Kohli. If the batter isn't deceived by the pace, the ball almost instructs him to hit it square towards the waiting fielders on the longer boundaries of the ground. Instead, Kohli backed away and punched through the line of a ball that had risen over his waist at the point of contact and sent it sailing for a six towards the sight screen.

"The shot I've looked at it a few times now. To hit that length and that line to where he did... basically straight, the key aspect to that is that his hands are in a really interesting position, they are close in and they get quite high behind him," Wood says beginning his deconstruction.

"But it's almost like a crack of a whip with his hands. So when you crack a whip, you don't go long with your hands, do you? You almost put the brakes on, you almost snap your wrist. So it's a lot shorter. So what he's done, he's got his hands in a great position. And that length of the ball with the line, it shouldn't, shouldn't go straight. But the fact that he's got his hands close into him, and he's just almost cracked the whip with his hands. He's flicked his wrists and the bat is at an angle where he's hitting straight but not playing straight, that's exactly what that is.

"And to get that ball he's managed to keep his body in the position, he stayed in the shot with his front side staying in for as long as possible, which enabled him to do that, Again, [it's a] freakish shot, you know," Wood exclaims.

Before his stint as a power-hitting coach, Wood spent time in the USA understanding the biomechanics associated with baseball before devising cricket-training specific programs to aid a batter's hitting power. One key area that has needed an evolution was the batting has been traditionally hand reliant. Power, Wood explains, comes from ground up, creating a kinetic energy chain that traverses from the back leg to the hip, through the back and then to the shoulders, elbows and out through the hands.

"There is a hip drive if you look at the shot, Kohli's back leg just slides away slightly," Wood says. "So it's almost like a scissor kick, that's what they call that. He's creating more space by his back leg sliding slightly. Because the ball is so tight to where he wants to hit it. He wants to obviously go straight. With a normal shot you would hit that probably on the leg side which enables your hips to go forwards but because he's trying to hit it straight, he's trying to access the shorter boundary. So what he's done is he's created that space by sliding his back leg slightly and that enables him to hit into his front hip, creating like an elastic effect, elasticity effect.

"Also not sure that he'd be aware that his body's doing that, the body is very clever. You know, if you target an area, your body will sort itself out to hit the ball the most efficiently to that area. If that makes sense."

That Kohli holds his bat much lower down on the handle, unlike big hitters who prefer holding it higher up, makes the shot that much more impressive, according to Wood. "A lot of the big guys will hold the bat at the top when they are looking to strike a ball. That's less control but more power. If you hold the bat lower, that's more control but less power. But he's got seriously, seriously good wrists."

Some sixes in India-Pakistan games have already acquired cult status. Think Javed Miandad's swipe in Sharjah, Sachin Tendulkar's upper cut in Centurion, Shahid Afridi's inside-out loft in Mirpur. Through all of these, there was a familiar sense of one player operating under a different gravity. Posterity will remember Kohli's back-away, punched six over long-on at the MCG for all the same reasons - for the timing of the hit, the occasion and what that shot eventually meant in the context of one of the most thrilling games of cricket.