Virat Kohli and the F word

When the cricket champ made India’s dreams come true, it showed the power of persevering through failure

Although it’s been two weeks since it happened, most of India is still reeling with the Virat Kohli special we had the privilege to witness during the India vs Pakistan Men’s World Cup T20 match. It’s undeniable that the former Indian men’s cricket captain’s knock would have been memorable on any day, and in any circumstance, but what made it unforgettable was that it came after a two year plus ‘lean patch’, where Kohli would regularly fail to excel with the bat.

As a society, failure isn’t something we are comfortable with. Growing up, the only stories we’d ever be told were either those of success, or those of bouncing back from failure. But no story would talk about how much or how often we fail, and rarely has anyone spoken about how normal that is. In our homes and educational institutes, failure is almost treated as an illness. It comes with a stigma that robs every bit of dignity from the person afflicted with it.

Success may not be everyone’s friend. It is failure that does not discriminate, no matter the caste, creed, colour, community or circumstance you may be from. And yet, when we see someone fail, we are unsure of how to react. In the best of cases, we will console the person who failed, as if failure is a loss and not a learning. But in the worst case, we look down upon or even shame the person for not being smart or savvy enough to succeed, as if success is an open secret for anyone to imbibe. This is because we have been so conditioned to be afraid of dealing with failure that we tend to treat those who succeed as demigods, and hustle all our lives to follow in their illuminated paths, so we may also one day be too big to fail (which, tbh, no one is!).

Mental health hero

I write so harshly about this fear of failure because, in not normalising how common, how okay, and how helpful it can be in introspecting, growing, learning, and even succeeding eventually, we have seen around us so much tragedy, and so much loss. Loss of the people who chose not to live because failure chose them.

Faced with such a dire context, it is hard to explain what it means to have one of the most visible, loved, venerated and respected Indians, Virat Kohli, not only go through failure publicly, but deal with it with an elegance that could now very well be a marker and a milestone.

Ever since he started struggling to put runs on the board, Kohli has been a shadow of himself, on and off the crease. He has been anxious, apprehensive, agitated; he has struggled, scrambled, stumbled… but with every day and every ball, he has gracefully lingered in failure. He faced with his bat innumerable balls searching for runs, and he faced with his mind innumerable brickbats that searched for the Virat Kohli of yore. Through it all, he chose not to be less visible, not to get triggered, not to be burdened by the stigma, not to be afraid of the comments, but to face it all with his head held high. And he used his platform to, as often as possible, speak up about his mental health, about how daunting failure can be, and about how he is so grateful for any support in these tough times.

So, when the runs came, and he made his spectacular comeback, it was not an example of a story of bouncing back from failure, but one of persevering through it. And as the rest of the world hails Kohli for being the champion cricketer he is, I am so grateful to him for being a champion of mental health, and of being the rare celebrity who has comforted us through his own failure.

Thank you, Virat.

WHEN WE SEE SOMEONE FAIL, WE ARE UNSURE OF HOW TO REACT. IN THE BEST OF CASES WE WILL CONSOLE THE PERSON, AS IF FAILURE IS A LOSS AND NOT A LEARNING.