After his unbeaten hundred in last November’s Perth Test, Virat Kohli volunteered what in most mouths would simply have sounded like a piety: ‘I just wanted to contribute to the team's cause. I don't want to hang around just for the sake of it. I take pride in performing for the country.’
The century proved a false dawn; the remark has landed precisely. Kohli has reaffirmed that disinclination to outstay his cricketer’s welcome, ruling off his Test career at 123 caps. It’s not quite worthy of the Englishman RC Robertson-Glasgow’s remark on news of the retirement of Bradman: ‘So must Rome have felt on the death of Hannibal.’ Kohli’s performances had been attenuating since his end of his captaincy commission, averaging only 32 in two-dozen Tests. But he remained Indian cricket incarnate, primus inter pares of a gilded generation now almost entirely passed.
It is banal to call him a great batter. He was that rarer phenomenon, a dramatic batter. He could not walk to the wicket without commanding attention. He could not play a defensive prod without a flourish, while his attacking shots had a sis-boom-bah flamboyance. He had better and worse days, and at times in later years could appear vulnerable and fallible, but I can’t recall him ever essaying an outright ugly or even ungainly stroke, even those he improvised. Part of him remained the purist, always in quest of an imagined ideal - that precise foot movement, that perfect impact, that signature follow through. Yet this was also never self-indulgent, never pedantic and never, ever boring. That Ahmedabad Test in 2023, for example, was the acme of tedium, but almost worth it for the calm calculation of Kohli’s best Test score against Australia - Thomas’s chart bears witness to the establishing boundaries, the reined in mid-section, the expanding range once the milestone was overhauled.
Above all, Kohli represented a cricket that sought to leave nothing to chance anywhere. Tendulkar, Dhoni, Dravid, Kumble: these were standard setters to be sure, but mainly for themselves. Kohli raised the general minimum in pursuit of an empowering maximum: he was not a Federer, all outward serenity, but a Djokovic, with a fiery self-mastery. When my friend Rajdeep Sardesai visited him in June 2016, Kohli emerged for the interview from his gym with a protein shake, with a spartan side order of almonds and a banana. By sharing videos of his cardio regime and embracing his gluten-free diet, he evangelised for cricket as a high-performance athletic endeavour, laid down a marker for succeeding generations. Look at the tapered physiques and lean muscle mass of this Indian generation; they are all Kohlis now.
Kohli, furthermore, was dedicated to Test cricket in a way that dignified them both: Test matches grew in significance by Kohli’s presence; Kohli stood taller for the five-day pedestal. He did not share his elders’ aversion to the DRS or their comfort in high-scoring draws. He dedicated India to the pursuit of victory everywhere, not just in front of home crowds on home pitches. His monument might well be that summer of 2018-19, where India stomped on Australia as they had been inclined to stomp on others. For all the magnificence of Pujara and all the penetration of Indian pace, that series was all-Kohli, all-the-time. He did not just captain; he commanded.
You get the sense that some of Kohli’s ambition died when India dropped from contention in the World Test Championship; seeing history in sweeps rather than steps, he understood another two-year cycle to be beyond him. In a way, too, his retirement is a compliment to the five-day format. At thirty-six, he can still make one-day hay and spread T20 mayhem. But to maintain the standard necessary for consistent Test success, Kohli has candidly conceded, is now beyond him, because no format makes such insistent and broad-based demands, and because his pride does not allow a mere ‘hanging on.’ That last Test failure at Sydney, at the end of an increasingly hapless summer, tolled the knell.
It’s a question for later consideration, perhaps, but worth foreshadowing: what now for India in Test cricket, in the absence of its foremost long-term exponent and most articulate advocate? It is as was said of de Gaulle: he cannot be replaced but must be succeeded. Times are changing too. The next big thing in Indian cricket will be big in a different way again.
Like everyone who grapples with fame, Kohli has found it occasionally confounding and inhibiting. But unlike Tendulkar, with his fetish for privacy, and Dhoni, with his suit-yourself insouciance, Kohli has always appeared to be loving every minute of his life, doing what he was put on earth to do with a lipsmacking relish. Plus, of course, he is not done yet - there are IPL worlds to conquer, and that gap in the Royal Challengers Bangalore trophy cabinet to fill. Yet Test cricket for India became him as no other pursuit. It’s something you wonder about every great player heading down the off ramp: will anything afterwards be so satisfying for them?
Superb writing as always - but I reckon he must be a nightmare to captain!!
If you produced a Kohli t-shirt similar to the Khawaja you could be funded for the next half dozen overseas tours. But I imagine you'd be getting formally worded legal emails pronto.