Kohli Becomes Virat

GH on this year's model

In his autobiography, AB de Villiers tells a story of breakfasting one morning during the 2016 Indian Premier League with Virat Kohli. What an event to have been the third party of, for the two Royal Challengers Bangalore stars got down to some serious existential chat.

Eventually, the South African, then grappling with his own motivation and engagement, popped the question. ‘So I was wondering,’ he said. ‘How long do you think you’re going to keep playing cricket?’

At this, De Villiers recalled, Kohli’s eyes lit up, and his smile opened. ‘I’m going to play forever,’ he announced confidently, facetious but defiant.

At the time, in fact, it must have seemed possible. He was a batter in his prime, the IPL’s player of the tournament. He was Indian cricket front and back, he was captain in every format, master of all domains.

But nothing stays the same. With the passing of eight years, Kohli is thirty-six. Few players get better after that age, and improvement has always seemed important to him - from the excellent, the extraction of the better yet.

Since that zenith, Kohli has shed his leadership roles, seen other eminences rise, and the BCCI slip into running a shabby rank turner racket. Having as skipper convinced Indians they would win anywhere, he has been collateral damage in India’s backwards drift to preparing shit tip pitches to suit their spinners.

All of which made Perth more meritorious and additionally delicious. One of the paradoxes of sport is that while we rejoice in its unpredictability, we like it all the more when it feels scripted. The Aussie media had been playing up the threat of a resurgent Kohli. Beware the tiger! Don’t poke the bear! That skittish first innings was a let down; but then, by golly, we got what we came for.

Once Kohli passed fifty, it became possible simply to enjoy it - like hearing an old familiar tune from youth, or reconnecting with an old friend. The sixes over third man and down the ground. The sweep! The reverse! Perforating the leg side, he even turned Marnus’s dross into something watchable. In rewarding dedication and perseverance, Test centuries always gladden the heart. But here was relief as well as triumph, and the lovelier for it.

It had been intriguing already to watch Kohli interact with his team. On the first morning at 9.30am, the Indians locked arms round shoulders in a bonding circle for their preliminary rites, including the presentation of caps for their newly-minted Test players, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Harshit Rana. Kohli, behind his sunglasses, did the honours, earnest, unsmiling and comprehensive. The players, for whom he must seem a guarantor of Indian prestige, hung on his every word.

Their coach is new, their captain was absent; their two mightiest bowlers had here been left out. To whom else could they look? When the teams ran past the greats whose names are attached this rivalry’s trophy, it was notable that while the Australians shook the hand of Allan Border, the Indians ran past Sunil Gavaskar. It wasn’t so much disrespect as that, for this team, Kohli casts all other legends into the shade. He is all the history they need.

In the field Kohli dropped a catch, and it hurt him; then he caught one, and it delighted him. As the Indian openers then came in on Saturday night, with their team well in control, Kohli emerged bare-headed from the dug out to applaud them with bat on gloved hand, pronouncing his benediction over their efforts.

Imagine being Yashasvi Jaiswal batting with Kohli on Sunday. Kohli had his own youthful struggles, rising in spite of the Delhi Daddies Cricket Academy rather than because of it; Jaiswal is, of course, Mumbai’s latest panipuri-to-princeling story. You somehow imagined the younger man growing with every nod, every glove touch. The contained fury with which Jaiswal greeted slapping a long hop to point might have been at embarrassment in front of his elder.

Most notable about Kohli’s unbeaten century was how his need for runs was sublimated in the pursuit of Indian victory. This wasn’t a junk hundred for which he wanted a day and a half’s indulgence; it was prepared, powered and paced with a late afternoon declaration in mind. Not for Kohli the Tendulkaresque love of the landmark; not for Kohli, worth nearly $100 million already, the obsession with the corporate scoreboard. 'I just wanted to contribute to the team's cause,’ he explained to Adam Gilchrist. ‘I don't want to hang around just for the sake of it. I take pride in performing for the country.’

Australians like Gilchrist, meanwhile, have seen Kohli in all his moods and phases. The angry young man of 2011-12 gave way to the run machine of 2014-15, who yielded to the uncompromising captain of 2018-19 and even the uxorious metrosexual of 2021-22.

This tour he has entered a new phase: that of living legend, symbol of continuity, and elder statesman, quipping with prime ministers. I notice that more and more Australians refer to him not as ‘Kohli’ - as they used to, often with the prefix ‘King’ - but as ‘Virat’. He’s that guy. He’s old mate. Because this concerns more than the innate Australian deference to sporting champions. We also have a thing about those who stick it out, who keep turning up, who day-in, day-out, put themselves on the line, even when it’s against us. Australians execrated Harold Larwood and Douglas Jardine the length and breadth of the country in 1932-33, but later accepted Larwood as countryman and amusedly welcomed Jardine as a visitor. ‘Though they may not hail me as Uncle Doug, I am no longer the bogeyman,’ he said with some surprise in the 1950s. ‘Just an old so-and-so who got away with it.’

Kohli has at times driven Australians similarly crazy. In the corresponding Perth Test of 2018, he rumbled with Tim Paine. In his autobiography, Paine complained: ‘Virat loves a fight, loves to lord it over the opposition, he plays on the edge, and he saw the opportunity to dominate us when we were essentially feeling our way….Virat was in our face the whole time and he just pushed it too far.’ Sure, he took it all too far; but, boy, can he, still, play guitar.

When the other half of Cricket Et Al, ran into Kohli at breakfast the day after the Test, there was no talk of his playing forever - Pete tells the story in today’s podcast.

Kohli was en familie, tending to Vamika and Akaay with Anushka, whom he tributed in his chat with Gilchrist: ‘Anushka has been right by my side through thick and thin. She knows everything that goes on behind the scenes, what goes on in the head when you don't play as well, you make a few mistakes after getting yourself in.’ As Pete says, he looks like someone for whom life is ever richer. Lucky him. And lucky us.