For a game that lacked any real drama, the idea that he might be denied a century as the innings was coming to a close had people praying, and cursing Hardik Pandya (who came out in an aggressive mode to alarmingly whittle down the target). Even skipper Rohit Sharma was forced out of his chair, exhorting Kohli to hit the final runs into the gap.

When he did that (100* off 111 balls), the crowd roared it’s approval and Kohli raised his bat to acknowledge them before calmly gesturing towards the dressing room as if to say “no need to worry, I’m here”.

Indeed, Kohli is very much here. Still here. He is the ultimate combination of the hunger for runs that defined Sachin Tendulkar and the coolness that made Mahendra Singh Dhoni the best finisher the game has seen. To that, he has added his own dose of fitness. Pakistan simply had to answer to his genius. Well, in ODIs, few ever do.

“I am in awe of his hard work,” Pakistan captain Mohammad Rizwan said after the game. “What kind of hard work he must have put in? The whole world is saying he is out of form, but he comes to a big match the whole world waits for, and scores runs effortlessly. I will praise his hard work and his fitness levels. We tried our best to get him out, but he got the better of us.”

Perhaps Pakistan could have attacked him outside the off-stump more; perhaps they could have zeroed in on the 4th-5th stump line that has troubled him so much, but this was a Kohli determined to put his troubles behind him.

“It’s a Catch 22. It has kind of been my weakness over the years, but I have scored a lot of runs on that shot,” Kohli told BCCI.tv about his cover drive.

He added: “Today was all about backing my shots. I think the first couple of shots were cover drives on the rise. So, I really had to let it go a little bit, take a bit of risk and follow through with my shots because when I hit those kinds of shots, I am in control when I bat out there.”

At first glance, you may think 100 runs off 111 balls in 151 minutes with seven fours and no sixes must have been hard work. But that’s always been the foundation of Kohli’s greatness in ODI cricket. His boundary percentage (28%) in the ton against Pakistan was in fact nearly three times his career record.

While the eye-catching cover drives stay with you, at the heart of a Virat Kohli ODI innings is his high-intensity accelerations between the wickets. It’s his template. It’s death by a thousand cuts.

Of his 14,085 career runs, 5,812 have come through singles. He’s taken 939 twos, eyeing gaps in the field bowlers wouldn’t have anticipated, challenging his batting partner for the second run with his unlimited stamina. And in that sense, this was as typical a Kohli innings as there could be.

In a way, the No.3 spot in ODIs is for the worker; the knot between blazing openers – think Tendulkar - and middle-order batters, who are left with situational roles – take Dhoni. Kohli makes his berth pivotal, by starting early and batting on, more often than not till the match is won.

His average of 58.20 (299 ODIs) is unmatched. Tendulkar did it for much longer (463 ODIs) but at an average of 44.83. Ricky Ponting (13,704 runs) did it with a more trophy-filled manic edge, Kumar Sangakkara (14,234 runs) with silken grace, but ODI cricket hasn’t seen an accumulator like Kohli.

“One thing that I have always thought of batting at No. 3 is to minimise risk and make sure to get the team in a winning position,” Kohli said. “If you have a chance to finish off the game, that is much better, and I have always preferred that kind of a situation. My role over the years has remained the same, whatever the demands of the game, I just put my foot down and try to do that.”

And in ODIs, when Kohli tries, he more often than not succeeds. For now though he is faced with the challenge of getting through the long break between the game against Pakistan and the one against New Zealand a week later.

Not that it’ll ever worry him. As he said with a smile, “at 36, a week’s break is good”.

Good for him and good for India. For when Kohli is in his element, India are pretty much unstoppable.