Mr Talent joins the party

Rohit Sharma's passion for video games knows no bounds. On Thursday, he traded the joystick of his super-sleek PS3 console for a mace of a bat and played 'Subdue the Subduer' in real life. On one occasion, he was given a lifeline before duly completing his maiden World Cup hundred. Another three overs, and he would have become only the 10th batsman to carry the bat in an ODI. It wasn't to be, but it didn't matter.

The result: a 137-run knock underlined, incredibly, by a not-so-cavalier approach. Gifted and artistic yet lazy and sluggish — that's how Sharma looks in the middle nine days out of ten. Against Bangladesh, he was different in the sense that he added patience and maturity to his near-complete repertoire to hold fort for a whopping 47 overs across 222 minutes.

Throughout his stay at the crease, he made India and their fans go through a gamut of emotions. Ecstasy topped the charts, but fear and frustration weren't far behind. Sharma started off the match by dispatching a fullish delivery bowled outside the off stump. But as the Bangladesh bowlers came into their own, bowling tight lines and not giving anything away, Sharma went into a shell. He hit the occasional four and a huge six off off-spinner Nasir Hossain, but by the time he got to his half century off 70 balls, you were forced to term it workmanlike.

But that was the need of the hour, really. Rubel Hossain and the spinners were calling the shots, so much so that they kept India to only 99/2 at the halfway stage. But Sharma bided his time. He called well with Suresh Raina, picked up the ones and twos and threes and quietly made his way into the 70s.

When the powerplay began, he let Raina take over the role of aggressor. That said he hit a couple of fours, including a calculated slog-sweep off Shakib Al Hasan, to move into the 80s. In the last over of the powerplay, Sharma made heavy weather of a juicy full-toss by misjudging it. He played a one-handed club to hole out to the man at deep midwicket. The umpire, Ian Gould, instinctively ruled the waist-high ball a beamer and Sharma went scot-free. He made the most of it and eventually got to his seventh ODI hundred — second at the MCG — off 107 balls.

After going through several periods without a boundary, Sharma knew he had earned the right to express himself freely. With just seven overs to go and still some runs to get in order to bat Bangladesh out of the game, he punched skipper Mashrafe Mortaza off the back foot to beat the cover fielder in the deep. In the 46th over, Sharma became the pearl that broke its shell as Hossain would realise. Sharma launched the express bowler over the long off fence before swatting the next ball to deep midwicket.

An elegant drive through extra cover fetched him another four, his 13th. A six and a four off Taskin Ahmed, another member of Bangladesh's impressive crop of pacers guided by Heath Streak, took him into the 130s. And if not for that low, in-swinging delivery which he failed to guide towards third man, Sharma would have gone on to get 150 or more.

Sharma got the better of every bowler. He scored at better-than-a-run-a-ball against three of them, with only Hasan managing to keep him quiet. But that was largely because Sharma chose to play him out. He scored 69 runs on the off side and 68 on the leg. He ran a whopping 50 singles, five twos and a three.

Naturally, skipper MS Dhoni praised him for his brilliance. "Rohit batted really well, the reason being that wickets kept falling on the other side, and still, he kept himself very calm. His strike rate dropped, but still, he knew if he's there and he plays maximum numbers of overs, he can definitely score and score at a good pace," Dhoni said.

It was a special knock from a special player and the fact that it came in a must-win game only added to the glitter. India could have hoped to see Sharma peak at a better time. For the record, it was the first-ever hundred by an Indian in a World Cup knockout game. Bet you didn't know that.