Virat Kohli played nine balls in two innings in this T20I series against England. He attempted boundaries off five of them. Two of them resulted in vintage Kohli boundaries - a four over wide mid-on and a six straight down the ground, but the other three got him out twice. On the evidence of Kohli's T20 career, it is perhaps true that this is not the best approach for him.
However, Kohli doesn't play in isolation. He bats in India's top order. It is incumbent upon them to take the risks and either score quickly themselves or let those behind them face more balls. That is the approach this team wants everyone to buy into, and Kohli is no exception.
"It's a bit of both," India's captain Rohit Sharma said, when asked if Kohli's new ultra-aggressive approach is a team instruction or a personal attempt to fight his way out of a rut. "We, as a team, we want to play in a certain way, and every player needs to buy into that thought process. Otherwise, you know, it's not gonna happen for you. And all the players, all the batters, who are part of this squad, are willing to take that extra risk and go and see what extra they can do with the bat.
"It's important to find out within yourself, you know, to try and do different kinds of things. Unless you try it, you will never be able to find out [what you are capable of]. So I think it is something that we have been trying to do for a while now. Some days it might come off, some days it might not. But we don't want to be afraid of going in and taking that extra risk. That's how we're going to learn as a team and that's how we will move forward as a team. So it's in everyone's thought process, everyone is quite comfortable with that idea. So yeah, that's the kind of direction the team is going to move in."
For years India played T20s as a shortened ODI, taking risks when batting first only when behind in the series or in must-win games. But this new management is quietly slipping in revolutionary ideas, such as wanting to play ODIs as an extension of T20Is.
It has left observers mighty impressed. Eoin Morgan, who played an integral part in England's white-ball revolution, has found India's new attitude towards risk "unbelievably impressive". Nasser Hussain believes India should be in the final of every white-ball tournament, given the quality they have.
"It is important for us to understand white-ball cricket properly," Rohit said, disagreeing with the notion that the upcoming ODI series will be of lower priority for India in a T20 World Cup year. "I mean 50-over cricket is an extension of T20 cricket. You might take slightly fewer risks than you do in T20s, but we have to take risks. It is not as if we won't take risks.
"We need to get used to playing freely. When you try to play freely, it comes with its failures both in individual performance and in team results, but you get to learn a lot from that. We are looking at the bigger picture, not the small picture. As it is, in India we are used to two-and-a-half-hour pictures. All these matches are crucial for us because somewhere we need to change something, and we can see things have started to change slightly.
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