Irritating, irksome, irrational . . . but at least Kohli cares!
IT IS less than a year since Virat Kohli instructed his bowlers to give England ‘ 60 overs of hell’ on the last day of the second Test at Lord’s — and proceeded to lead by example as India romped to a famous win.
He is no longer India’s captain, having quit in January, but on the evidence of the last four days at Edgbaston he remains their beating heart, their agent provocateur. Truly, he has hurled himself into the fray.
In one corner has been the combined forces of Bazball, the Hollies Stand and — before tea yesterday — the fastest opening century partnership in England’s history. In the other has been, well, Virat Kohli, a one-man ball of mainly unmitigated fury who regards it as his role to right wrongs, both real and imagined.
Kohli is one of cricket’s all-time greats, despite a drought the length and breadth of the Kalahari that has seen him go without a century since November 2019. But his batting struggles have not dimmed his love of a scrap. If anything, they have made him angrier, a development thought impossible by behavioural psychologists who have studied his antics down the years.
During this game, Kohli’s major contributions have not been with the bat, since he has managed just 11 and 20.
In England’s first innings, his sledging stirred Jonny Bairstow from his slumbers, to the extent that a quiet start became a raucous century. Without it, Ben Stokes’s team would already be dead and buried.
In their second, he could be heard goading the out- of-form Zak Crawley with cries of ‘let’s see some Bazball then!’. By the time Jasprit Bumrah — captain because Rohit Sharma, Kohli’s replacement, caught Covid — dismissed Crawley, England’s openers had got the chase going with 107 inside 20 overs.
No matter. Kohli is not a man easily shaken from his convictions and he used the wicket of Crawley to settle a score with the Hollies Stand, who by now were several beers into their shift.
Moments earlier, the more politically inclined among them had been singing in derogatory terms about Boris Johnson. Now Kohli turned to the fans and placed a regal finger to his lips — either because he thought the Prime Minister had been unfairly maligned, or because he thought they were singing about him. And, let’s face it, they often do.
Either way, he correctly sensed an opening. Making good use of the big Indian presence in a crowd of around 18,000, he began conducting the spectators like Simon Rattle. They responded as he must have hoped they would.
But Kohli was merely warming to his task. When the players left the field for tea, he accompanied Alex Lees most of the way to the boundary. It did not look entirely convivial. When Bumrah removed Ollie Pope with the first ball after the break, Kohli could barely control himself.
It is rare that an umpire has to ask a cricketer to go easy on the celebrations, but Aleem Dar decided to step in, presumably concerned that Kohli was about to burst a blood vessel, or worse.
Dar should have kept his powder dry. When Lees was run out moments later after he failed to respond in time to Joe Root’s call for a single, Kohli lost all control and danced across the wicket on a length. England had lost three for two and Kohli, without taking a wicket, holding a catch, or effecting a run- out, was at the heart of it all.
It is possible English cricket lovers have been lulled into a false sense of peace and love by the New Zealanders, whose cricketers apologise for a misplaced glare.
And perhaps Kohli’s perpetual anger is just the flipside of an argument we should be grateful to embrace — because as long as he is getting agitated about the game’s oldest format, as long as he is irritating opponents, provoking umpires and castigating crowds, Tests feel alive, vibrant and part of cricket’s conversation.
He is a caricature who cares profoundly, a pantomime villain capable of real- life depth, a world-class cricketer who has lost his way with the bat without sacrificing his drive.
Even on his most combustible days, it is hard to imagine Test cricket without Virat Kohli.