India, Nov. 6 -- Between November 2019 and September 2022, Virat Kohli went 1,020 days without an international hundred. It was impossible to reconcile to; the run machine who had stacked up three-figure knocks for fun in the preceding five years had gone missing, replaced by a ponderous individual weighed down by the pressure of his own expectations.

The century that ended the extended drought came in the unlikeliest format, at the T20 Asia Cup in Dubai. It wasn't as if Kohli hadn't made 20-over centuries previously, but all of them had come for Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the IPL. His sole international hundred in the T20 format, against Afghanistan, was the unexpected vehicle that brought him a second wind.

At the time, the rising...