With three consecutive wins, India are through to the Super Eight stage, which will be held entirely in the West Indies.
Kohli came into the T20 World Cup after setting the IPL ablaze, scoring upwards of 700 runs at a strike-rate of over 150 for Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
Therefore, it wasn’t an entirely misplaced expectation that he will continue to fire in the ICC showpiece, which is perhaps his final chance to earn India an ICC World Cup after 13 years.
But three matches have gone by, and Kohli has five runs at an average of 1.66, including a ‘Golden Duck’ against the USA.
His form has provided an interesting subplot to the game against tournament-debutants Canada, which is otherwise inconsequential.
Perhaps, an 1850 km trip from New York to Florida might bring with it a turnaround in fortunes for Kohli, who must be hurting after those ordinary outings.
The pitch at the Broward County stadium might not be as spiteful as the one in New York, where the uneven bounce of the tracks and the slow nature of the outfield became bigger talking points than the cricket that was played.
What would ease some pressure on him is the fact that the lean run has not really affected the team’s fortunes.
Sqauds:
India: Rohit Sharma (c), Hardik Pandya, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Sanju Samson, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Siraj.
Canada: Saad Bin Zafar (c), Aaron Johnson, Dilon Heyliger, Dilpreet Bajwa, Rishiv Joshi, Jeremy Gordon, Junaid Siddiqui, Kaleem Sana, Kanwarpal Tathgur (wk), Navneet Dhaliwal, Nicholas Kirton, Pargat Singh, Ravinderpal Singh, Rayyankhan Pathan, Shreyas Movva (wk).
Match starts at 8 PM IST.