The Legend of King Kohli
INDIA’S CRICKET CAPTAIN—AND ARGUABLY THE COUNTRY’S FAVOURITE CELEBRITY—VIRAT KOHLI STAMPED HIS LARGER-THANLIFE FOOTPRINT ACROSS THE ARENA OF 2017. WHAT EXPLAINS HIS BLAZING FORM IN ALL FORMATS OF THE GAME AND BEYOND?
une 11, 2017, Oval, London. India were playing a virtual knockout match against South Africa for a place in the Champions Trophy semi-final. They had lost rather unexpectedly to unfancied Sri Lanka two days ago at the same venue, and this was a make-or-break contest. On top of the pressures of a high-stakes match against the world’s number one ODI team was all the ambient media noise about frictions between captain and coach (Anil Kumble). For Virat Kohli, the captain, it was a match of immense significance.
Riding on a sharp bowling performance, India made an easy game of it. And Virat, as he has done so often through the year, anchored the run chase, remaining unbeaten on 76 to close out the game. But despite winning at a canter, the skipper seemed unmoved—he wasn’t to be swayed by the flood of praise.
June 18, 2017, Oval, London. India lost the Champions Trophy final to Pakistan and Virat Kohli scored a duck. Within moments of the match getting over, Kohli was trolled on social media and called all kinds of names by furious fans lashing out for the great letdown. The
defeat had hurt him more than anyone else but having played sport at the highest level for over a decade, he was no stranger to the extreme love-hate of fans. He knew well how cricketers in India are deities one day and fallen angels the next.
As it turned out, the Champions Trophy final was an aberration in an otherwise glorious year for Virat. His 2,818 international runs in calendar 2017 is the third highest ever in history—and only 46 runs shy of the record held by Kumar Sangakkara (2,868 runs in 2014); he has nine back-to-back series wins as captain; and six 200-plus scores in the past 17 months—that’s special by even his own super-achieving standards. Quite aside from the high averages in all formats of the game, the most certain measure of his mastery and domination of the field is that he occupies pole position in the ICC rankings in the two shorter formats and is at #2 in Tests (behind Steve Smith of Australia). For perspective, no other batsman in the world features among the ICC Top 5 in all three formats. The captain-coach spat is long forgotten, and the year has ended with the fairytale flourish of a grand wedding.
The Transformation of Virat Kohli
Perth, January 2012. The Australians, as they often do, had managed to get under Virat’s skin. Not able to handle the heckling from spectators, Kohli descended to low-level combat: showing the middle finger to a particularly noisy section of the crowd after they called him a ‘wanker’. The anger (mis)management was a feature of early Kohli, and there were concerns if it would get in the way of a full blossoming of his talent.
Two months down the line, it was a very different story. Kohli had just scored a match-winning 183 against Pakistan in Dhaka in a match that had ended close to midnight. The media, present in strength, was waiting for the Kohli sound bite before filing their match reports. At Mirpur, the press conference enclosure is on the opposite side of the pavilion and one has to trek across the ground to reach the media enclosure. On his way to the media centre, Virat suddenly stopped, turned and started jogging towards a section of his fans in the stands. Some 2,000 spectators had stayed back after the match and were still screaming “Kohli, Kohli” with gusto. Virat, to the surprise of many present, decided to oblige them first with photographs and autographs before turning his attention to the media. He was fully aware, of course, of what he was doing, and he even apologised to the media contingent as soon as he
entered the press conference room. The transformation had begun. A new maturity, a new composure now seemed to cloak the aggressive on-field persona. In November 2013, after playing his 200th Test and his last international, Sachin Tendulkar sat in the Wankhede dressing room, all by himself, contemplating the moment. Here’s what happened next, in his own words: “Virat walked up to me. I could see tears in his eyes as he approached me and held out a gift for me. It was evidently something very close to his heart. He said his dad had given it to him (a family heirloom for good luck) and he’d always wondered who he would pass it on to. I was speechless that he’d considered me worthy of such a rare honour. As we hugged, a lump had started to form in my throat, and I asked Virat to leave before I burst into tears.”
By 2016-17, when Virat fully took over the captaincy, in all formats, the transformation was complete. Still combative and always a straight shooter, he was unafraid to call the Australian captain a cheat without ever using the word or taking on the media for criticising M.S. Dhoni and questioning his place in the team. The man has the unqualified loyalty of the squad and the support staff. He wasn’t perturbed by the cutting words of outgoing coach Anil Kumble nor by the backlash on social media prompted by the Kumble ouster. He was quite matter of fact when he said to me: “I have to take responsibility for my actions just as I take credit for my success… The media too has a job to do. They are within their rights to criticise me. My job as the captain of the Indian cricket team is to lead the team to the best of my ability. As long as I am true to my calling and prepare the best every time I step out to lead India, I’m not concerned about what is being said or written about me. I know how hard I work and as long as my preparations are going the way I want them to, the results will come.”
This extreme self-assurance, mistaken for arrogance by some, is also key to understanding the Virat Kohli phenomenon. That, and what Tendulkar describes as his “peripheral vision”. “He can read the game brilliantly and can anticipate the run of play well in advance. That’s what makes him stand out.” Sachin might even be crediting him with a kind of cricketing prescience, apart from the ability to pace his knock to a nicety. “That’s why he is so good in a run chase. He knows and understands where a match can be [before it gets to that point], which helps him marshal his resources better.”
Said peripheral vision was eloquently on show when India chased down a formidable Australian total in the world T20 encounter in Mohali on 27 March 2016 and in the first Test against Sri Lanka in Kolkata 16-20 November 2017. In Mohali, Virat, to quote compatriot Ravichandran Ashwin, “hunted down the Australian total with great precision” and in Kolkata, he set up the game with a century on a pitch that was difficult for his bowlers. “It
Kohli is India’s biggest brand, valued at $144 million. But cola endorsements are against his fitness ideals
is as if he knows the grids of stadiums like a mathematician. He knows where the gaps are, and while chasing, the acceleration is just perfect. He is a role model for all of us,” says Ashwin, himself one of the brightest stars on India’s cricketing firmament, with a trophy record to his name of being the quickest (52 matches) to 300 Test wickets.
For Sourav Ganguly, another Kohli fan, there’s daylight between Virat and the rest. “Maybe in Test cricket, Steve Smith is slightly ahead, but when you consider all formats of the game, it has to be Virat Kohli,” he says. In his reckoning, to watch him bat is to treat yourself. “He is the sort of player who’ll bring fans back to Test cricket,” Sourav gushes. Decoding the secret of this mastery of many formats, Sourav says: “Look at his shot selection closely. He never slogs. Even when he lifts the ball, it’s a conventional cricketing shot. Very rarely will you see him play a false stroke. Because he’s able to get runs effortlessly and able to score quickly across formats, he is never under pressure. And because he scores quickly, the bowler is always under pressure when bowling to him. He’s equally at home against pace and spin. Bounce does not faze him because he can play the pull shot to perfection. Which is why I think he’ll be successful in South Africa as well. And against spin, he can rely on his deft footwork.”
For David Warner, himself one of the best in the business, it’s down to selfbelief: “He is a supremely confident batsman. His self-belief is what makes him different. Even if he is chasing 350, he knows he can swing the match in a matter of a few overs and is hardly ever under pressure. Someone who has scored 50 international hundreds in just nine years has to be a very good player.”
Virat’s mantra of fitness is now a way of life for his team. Photos of his workouts are a regular on social media
The cult and business of fitness
The other, already much-storied legacy of Virat is his obsession with fitness. The current Indian team is arguably the best fielding unit in the world across formats with Virat’s mantra of fitness becoming a way of life for his young team. Every second day, he posts a photo of his workout on social media. In matters of fitness, his benchmarks are not even only cricketers—and, as Sourav Ganguly says, he is possibly in the same league as Cristiano Ronaldo or Justin Gatlin or Wayde van Niekerk or Gareth Bale.
From introducing high-altitude training into his own regimen to making the Yo-Yo Endurance Test compulsory for all India cricketers, Virat now wants to take the country with him on a fitness journey. “If we can get people to come out and play and take pride in doing so, we will become a healthier India,” he said while launching his own sport and lifestyle line One8, in collaboration with Puma, in November.
The deal, valued at over Rs 100 crore over a period of eight years, brings to the fore the savvy businessman in Virat. While turning down cola advertisements because he doesn’t “believe in the product”, presumably because it doesn’t square with his ideals of fitness, Virat, India’s biggest brand, valued at $144 million, no longer believes in deals for a year or two. “Long-term associations mean he can influence brand campaigns and shape the product line in sync with his vision,” says a leading Indian brand expert. “He knows that sporting careers are short, with only a few purple patches… and is justifiably making the most of his current dominance.” Judging by the current run of play, the idealism Virat
Tough Tests await in the new year. A victory in any one of the away tours will give Kohli an aura of invincibility
is holding out for in his product endorsements—which means getting selective and turning down potentially lucrative deals—is only working to his advantage. He is in a position to choose and his scrupulousness is only adding to the aura of his brand.
Scruples and a sense of fair play are manifest in his handling of Dhoni, who is in the evening of his international career. Every time the media has attacked the former captain, Virat has come to his rescue. “I don’t understand why MSD is being singled out,” he thundered at a press conference on November 8. “This is very different from anything I have seen,” says Sourav. “I am delighted to see Virat is protecting Dhoni the way he is.” Do you hear a wish-it-were-so lament? Well, anyway, buoyed by the captain’s support, Dhoni has lately been a much more expressive version of himself on the field.
A famous wedding and life hereafter
For Kohli, who is as public a celebrity figure as you’ll find, the line between his personal and professional life is firmly drawn. The decision to conduct his lavish—yet private—wedding at a heritage resort in Tuscany, Italy, and the way the whole event was choreographed, including the controlled access to media, speaks volumes about that commitment. Wed-
ding over, he was happy to part the doors for breathless fans and media back at home: with the two grand receptions, in Delhi and Mumbai, he made it up to the media for his Italian escape. As while batting, so in life, Virat seems to possess a charmed sense of timing. The wedding, which came at the end of a year of high achievement, his most successful professional year so far, and after the acrimony of a captain-coach spat was happily behind him, seemed like a perfect way to sign off the year.
Tough tests await in the new year. Despite the sheer scale of his achievements, the Virat story is still unfolding. A victory in any one of the away tours to South Africa, England and Australia will give him an aura of invincibility. Is Virat aware of the enormity of the task at hand? Does he know what failure in the next 12 months might do? Two separate reports in the last week of October 2017, both involving Kohli, both of which consumed a lot of newsprint, tell me he does. While the first celebrated Kohli as one of the world’s leading sports brands, the second speculated on his then likely marriage with actorpartner Anushka Sharma. What’s interesting in each of these cases is how Kohli was being consumed and appropriated. Of course, anything Kohli says/ does is news.
That he may get married to Anushka was considered breaking news across media platforms. And the wedding earlier this month seemed to send a news-hungry media into an uncontrollable tizzy. Wedding photos went viral on Twitter every time a new one was posted and within days it was revealed that Virat had overtaken Shah Rukh Khan as India’s most valued brand. There’s a lot at stake and Virat knows the highs and lows of his trade.
The last words on Kohli have not yet been written. Five years down the line, will he be hailed as India’s greatest batsman and finest captain, or will he go down as an autocrat who treated a legend like Kumble unfairly? Will it really matter to him how we label him? Does Kohli, the person, really care? My guess is he doesn’t deep down. He looks fully immersed in the moment, at peace with himself, in his gym, at training, in marriage and between those 22 yards. My guess is he won’t blink giving up multi-crore endorsement contracts. The space he occupies in his head is inviolate—he is all alone when he bats or trains. It’s a passionate human robot with precision focus. Virat is fashioning a young Indian side in the same mould of utter self-belief, and it seems to be paying off. So far. He will continue to polarise opinion, but he will give us results. As veteran all-rounder Ian Botham says: “The best thing about Virat is that he plays to win. No matter what the situation, he will still want to dominate and win matches. That’s what makes him special.”
On the evidence of his exploits in 2017, no one will challenge that assertion.