From a brash young upstart he has turned into a legend of the game – in a manner decidedly different from the man whose heir he is
Andrew Fidel Fernando28-Oct-2023In the last match he played, second-to-last ball of the opposition innings, Virat Kohli takes a straightforward catch at the long-on boundary, punches the air, and when the crowd clocks who the fielder is, he turns to them, springs up on his feet and thumps his chest, roaring.This is who he has always been. Always revelled in being. Balls to the wall, across all endeavours, every second of his existence.So much so that for many non-Indians (and not a few Indians) early-career Kohli was a brat. At home, this young batter of significant promise had obviously endeared himself, not least when after the 2011 World Cup final he proclaimed that Sachin Tendulkar had “carried the burden of this nation for 21 years, so it’s time we carried him”.Related
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But abroad, he was the rat who threw up a middle finger at an Australian stand, retaliated when other crowds were hostile, made it a point to celebrate wickets more animatedly than any of his team-mates, became a figure of impotent fury when India lost and a finger in the eye of opposition fans when they won.Kohli? On par with Tendulkar? One of the best ever? Get out of here. He’ll burn himself out. No one can sustain this. Let him learn to behave himself first.It is a reflection of how hot Kohli burned that the era of the sceptics was short-lived. Very quickly he was the heir of an incomparable. Even when Kohli’s greatness was only incipient, Tendulkar’s mantle was thrust upon him at home, a surprise to many of us looking on.In the years since, as India’s economy has exploded, as its space programme has made giant leaps, the Sachinification of Kohli has made more sense. Perhaps it is a vacuum that demanded to be filled. Tendulkar brought a measured, old-world sensibility to his rise, which reflected India’s newfound prominence in the world. Kohli’s advance, 20 years later, seemed to demand to be the shining centre of attention. Here was a tornado of a cricketer, blown into existence by the same winds that were rousing India’s newest transformation.
Kohli, still thumping his chest, still yelling into the night, still picking fights with opposition players, has found his own style of maturity
There was the brashness, of course, but also a refusal to back down, and an assiduous eking out of every advantage. There was also constant evolution – one poor Test tour of England in 2014 prompting a rethink of his batting strategy (going forward more, batting outside the crease, giving up a portion of his back-foot play) that emphatically reversed the suggestion that he couldn’t contend with the swinging red ball. In T20 he always had gears, but he began to move through them more proactively.Through the middle of the last decade, you began to get a sense that there was no challenge Kohli could not overcome. Rohit Sharma had his double-hundreds and Steven Smith dominated Tests. But in ODIs there was no greater mass producer of hundreds. Kohli seemed destined not just to overhaul Tendulkar’s record of 49 tons but to speed past it.Here, perhaps, is where the two are most unlike each other. Tendulkar, whose humility was chief among his non-cricketing virtues, who accepted the adulation but did not overtly rejoice in it, whose private life was largely his own, was almost divine. Kohli, who wasn’t a Test batter at 16, whose flaws were public, whose language was aggression, whose social media documented every act, and whose wife, the actor Anushka Sharma, is a massively followed public figure in her own right, was supremely human.And also a supreme human, because in pursuit of his ambitions, he changed his diet, worked out relentlessly, performed Olympic lifts, documented all of it, sold it to companies, made profits, and appeared in ads that turned his drive into rupees. Through all of this, he also scored runs, took catches, and celebrated wickets more ecstatically than the bowlers themselves, which is something his wife has publicly made fun of, much to the amusement of Kohli himself.In the latest era of Kohli, post-captaincy, post-century drought – another nod to his humanness – that coincided with the Covid pandemic, Kohli has retained almost all of the heat that made him so divisive early on, but there have also been bracing revelations. He has spoken of mental-health battles. A man whose actions radiate hyper-masculinity speaking out about the softest, most vulnerable parts of himself. In his relationship and marriage to Anushka, who is no less a superstar though from a different galaxy, Kohli has also publicly been doting, generous and gentle.Starry, starry day: Kohli and his wife Anushka Sharma with Roger Federer at the Australian Open in 2019•Getty ImagesAnd whatever aspects of 21st-century India Kohli has embodied, he has never reflected a certain aspect of India. When Mohammed Shami was attacked for his religion after India lost a game to Pakistan, Kohli issued a full-throated defence of his team-mate. He called those who derided Shami for his faith not just misguided but “spineless” for doing it on social media. He called the attacking of a person (in general terms) not merely unfortunate but “pathetic” and “the lowest level of human potential that one can operate at”.”Religion is a very sacred and personal thing to every human being,” he said. “That should be left there.”Though a white-ball monster first, Kohli also brought his furious energy to the Test format. He not only raised his own red-ball batting to the dizzying standards he was setting in the shorter forms, but maintained without relent that Tests were the pinnacle. He was no less intense in the empty stadiums often seen in Test cricket.Perhaps he has not embraced late-stage statesmanship as many other great cricketers have. Ricky Ponting became almost cuddly towards the end of his career; Kumar Sangakkara had left the young, mouthy version of himself in the rear-view mirror.But Kohli, still thumping his chest, still yelling into the night, still picking fights with opposition players, has found his own style of maturity.You can be patriotic without being a rabid nationalist. You can be hyper-masculine and see your wife as an equal. If these do not seem like especially brave or admirable positions, that is to take Kohli out of his social context.He sits now on 48 centuries, one short of Tendulkar. If cricket is a religion in India, Kohli is decidedly not its god. That position has been filled and Kohli has never had those ambitions anyway. He has been human. Has tried to be the best of humans, the most productive of humans, and cricket-wise the most aggressive of humans even.This, unapologetically, is who he has always been. Always revelled in being.
