What has this nice Kohli done to the snotty brat from Delhi?

● The stink of sweat and rage hung like a pair of unseen corpses from invisible nooses in a windowless room buried in the bowels of the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi. It was December 2 2015.

No-one was surprised, and not only because the Kotla is an unlovable mongrel of a ground detested even by its own fleas.

Spectators who have not secured the relative luxury of a plastic seat out in the blazing sun have to sit on years of accumulated dirt covering bare concrete.

Pigeon shit falls from a ceiling alive with feathered frenzy onto the laptops and heads of the unfortunates in the press box.

A roomful of perspiring reporters in a place air-conditioning forgot was the source of the stink of sweat.

The rage shimmered from Virat Kohli, who was captaining India in a home test series for the first time. His eyes looked like ping-pong balls about to escape their sockets and fly across the wretched room.

The bristles of his beard seemed to stand on end with pointed disgust. His forehead was a battering ram against the indignity of it all, his chin the prow of a ship cutting through a storm of floating filth.

By then India had won the series, and they would add the Delhi test to South Africa’s crown of thorns.

But all Kohli was asked to talk about was the state of the pitches in Mohali and, especially, Nagpur. They were, if you followed the press’s narrative, 22 yards of dishonesty that had cheated South Africa out of a fair chance of winning.

Would you not also have been livid? Would you not also have spat anger at every withering question, each more weedily wordy than the last?

It’s not easy to feel sympathy for people like Virat Kohli, who seem to have landed themselves a fairy-tale life complete with a Bollywood actress wife and the luxury of never having to consider the price of anything.

But you wouldn’t have been human if you couldn’t find at least a pang of empathy for a man who had succeeded handsomely and was being treated like a miserable failure. Poor bastard.

The Western Province Cricket Club is to the Kotla what Beauty was to the Beast, vividly verdant in otherwise beige Rondebosch.

In a delightfully air-conditioned, sunfilled room of the grand clubhouse perched high above the field sat Kohli for the first press conference of India’s current tour. It was December 30 2017.

There was no stink — of rage, sweat or anything else. There was only Kohli’s measured, thoughtful, articulate, respectful replies to everything that was asked of him.

When he looked at and listened to each warbling reporter as they asked their questions, it was as if there was no-one else in the room, and that the question was the finest yet put to anyone in the entire history of journalism.

It seemed as if Kohli was learning, gratefully, more from the question than could ever be gleaned from his answer.

Until, that is, he gave his answer, which was illuminating and fulsome and ever so helpful.

Who was this nice man and what had he done with the snotty little brat we had to put up with at the Kotla? Whoever he was, we’ll keep him.

He had a wobble in a presser after the Centurion test — when Kohli calls a reporter “Sir”, that reporter is in the firing line — but that has been forgotten.

Not that aficionados who watch the game with both eyes open will forget what Kohli has done on the field this summer.

Whether at the crease or in the field, he has been an arresting presence.

Cricket needs more Kohlis. Thank you, Sir. And goodbye.

When he listened to each reporter, it was as if there was no-one in the room