I have to disagree with some of your points.
Not true. After 11 overs, West Indies were 38/2. At that stage, Marlon was
26 in 32 balls! He knew he had to play out Mathews, who was bowling his cutters superbly on a nightmarishly tough pitch. After that, he moved through the gears and targetted Malinga, whose pace and style of bowling (no cutters at all) was the easiest to face. It was genius batting. He moved through all stages of the perfect innings. From defending everything in a dire position to stop a collapse, to going into second and third gear and finally smashing sixes to push the total forward.
If Marlon had got out in 12-13th over, West Indies would have been bowled out for <100. I have absolutely no doubt about this.
The pitch in 2012 was far tougher, and was gripping even more. And here's a fun fact. In the whole match, 8 sixes were hit. Marlon hit 6 of them
I think Kohli's innings was incredible, too. But Samuels' was a smidgen better. The occasion was bigger, the pitch was tougher, the opposition bowling attack was better (Malinga, Mendis, Mathews are all superb t20 bowlers) West Indies were in a
much more dire situation and it looked like they had no way back, and he scored an absurd proportion of their runs. (When Samuels was finally dismissed, he had got
78 out of West Indies' total of 108 runs!).
But we will agree to disagree. Both are legendary knocks in this format