What we learned from two very contrasting Virat Kohli centuries against the West Indies

Sometimes you see a player and you think you know everything about him. And yet, it's still such great fun watching him bat, because as it turns out out, you can learn something new about him everyday.

Throughout the recently concluded West Indies series, we experienced precisely that with Virat Kohli. We saw two different sides to him in two innings that he played, one in Guwahati and the other in Visakhapatnam.

On the surface, a 140-run innings in Guwahati seems right in line with Kohli's one-day international career and its glittering array of records. But there was something very striking about that century.

Most of Kohli's innings, like the one in Visakhapatnam, are hard running innings, with not a lot of boundaries in there. So the Windies at times had 6 fielders inside the circle, and they particularly looked to cut off his single down to the third man. There was third man, there was point, there was a man just in front of cover.

In Guwahati we saw a different side of Kohli, the one that adapts mid-match. Suddenly, while batting in the 30s, he went down the wicket and hit the ball in the air. The straight fours that he smacked were something you can see 50 times and still marvel at in awe, much like the manner you did the old Tendulkar shots.

Everything was just so straight; it was almost like geometric perfection. He also came down the wicket, right leg up in the air, and flicked a ball wide of mid on.

But why was he playing like that? I think he was trying to show that there is another side to his game.

If you think this there is one way how Virat Kohli plays his cricket, that there's a template where he takes a certain number of balls to get to his 50, a few more for his hundred, and that's always the way he goes goes about his business, you couldn't be more wrong.

Set a field and he will change his whole shot-making approach. Even the matter in which he got out was telling; he played a lot of shots that day, but different kinds of shots.

Now, in the innings that he played in Visakhapatnam, 157 from 129 balls, he showed us yet another dimension of his game. He ran 81 of those runs, and that's not to forget he probably ran 60-70 for his partner as well. Though he broke the shackles at the very end of the innings, he didn't look for big shots for a vast majority of the time he spent at the crease.

Hard running style, tiring muscles, hands cramping, but never giving up. And that's a lesson for everybody around him - that once you get to a hundred, it's not a sign that you have achieved something. Instead, an innings only ends at the 50-over mark.

It's an apples-and-oranges comparison, but he reminds you a little bit of Rafael Nadal playing tennis. Every point has to be given everything that you have.

Kohli played two different kinds of innings, and just casually slipped past his hundred number 38. He now has 62 hundreds across all formats, and is closing in on the greats like Jacques Kallis and Ricky Ponting.

This is wonderful patch of form to say the least. If you are doing nothing these days, or even if you aren't, just sit back and watch the many different facets of Virat Kohli, specially post 2016. His numbers since that year are simply staggering.

Early on in his career, he was getting hundreds in 60 balls, in 62 balls, once even in 52 balls. Now he is getting hundreds from hundred balls. And you can see that, as a player matures, as the responsibility on him grows, as the expectations from him grow, he starts to cut down risks, aware that his wicket is the one that the opposition team wants and which he can't give away so easily.

So if you find that Kohli is now striking at 100, well that's not bad, is it? More importantly though, the consistency in the manner that he scores runs in all formats is absolutely incredible. And that is something I hope other players around him - the Rohits, the Dhawans and the Rahanes - start trying to emulate.