Back in July, Virat Kohli did something remarkable. In the course of his 283-ball 200 in Antigua — the first double-century by an Indian captain in the Caribbean — he played no remarkable shot. There were no outrageous hoicks, no monster sixes, and no raging counter-attacks. He saw no need to take on any bowler. It was instead a tone-setting knock in the first Test of an away series, bailing India out of a tricky 74 for 2.
No part of it shone too bright. What stood out was the sense of inevitability. He knew which balls to leave and which to go after. He had little trouble in finding the gaps, both with the good deliveries and the bad. His first hundred runs, off 134 balls, was his second-fastest centuryin Tests. Yet nothing about it screamed sensational, nothing made your jaw drop. Granted, he was up against a relatively benign bowling attack on a pitch that held few demons but those details seem to make little difference to Kohli these days. Be it Tests, ODIs or T20s, home or away, irrespective of the opponents and the match situation, the expectation is that Kohli will figure it out. Team in trouble? No big deal. Tricky chase? No worries. Iffy pitch? No problem. Bowlers fired up? Chill out. Records up for grabs? Thank you very much.
In an era of specialists, Kohli’s technique works across formats and conditions. Not for him the ramp over the slips or the scoop over the wicketkeeper. The reverse-sweep, he mostly keeps out. What he is concerned with is body balance, watching the ball, and staying fit through an innings. The longer he stays in the middle, the better the chance he gives himself — and his team — of success.
This command over body and mind hasn’t come about overnight though. In the summer of 2012, Kohli went into the IPL in sizzling form. He had cemented his Test spot with a hundred in Adelaide, and was unstoppable in one-dayers — a format where, in just four years, he was eliciting comparisons with the greats. The pre-tournament expectations were for Kohli to carry Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) to their first IPL title. Sixteen games later, RCB hadn’t yet made the playoffs. Kohli sparkled, but only occasionally.
“I was hitting the ball really well and wanted to bat aggressively,” he told The Cricket Monthly last June, “But that did not happen. So that really messed me up mentally. My eating habits, my training habits, they became very bad. I looked at myself in the mirror after the IPL and… I told myself: ‘You cannot look like this if you are an international cricketer’.”
What followed was an overhaul. Kohli lost “about 11 kg in eight months”. He monitored his diet with military discipline, zeroing in on a specific brand of mineral water and setting himself hourly reminders to drink specific amounts. He tracked his sleep and was obsessive about what he ate and how much. Out went all the junk food. In came a hundred squats a day and a lower-body workout regimen that would enable him to hare between wickets.
“ Woh kuch khaata hi nahi ,” his team-mate at Royal Challengers, the stocky Sarfraz Khan, told the The Indian Express in June. “ Kya fitness hai uska !” (He barely eats anything; how fit he is!)
Since June 2012, around the time when he decided “to do something” about his fitness, Kohli has been in a rarefied zone. He has made 25 international hundreds in eight of the nine countries he has played in; averaged close to 60 in India’s victorious ICC Champions Trophy campaign in 2013, and over 50 in the 2015 World Cup where India reached the semi-final. In eight Tests against Australia he has averaged 75. He was the player of the tournament in not one but two World T20s, in 2014 and 2016. (There was a slight blip in England in 2014 but even there, though the runs dried up, he was happy with his preparation and his positive frame of mind.)
Equally transformative during the phase in which his batting has caught fire: Kohli’s head has cooled off. Gone are the fifties and hundreds brought up with cuss words spewed out. Gone are the overt gestures towards booing crowds. The anger that smouldered has given way to a sustained rage, directed less at others and more inwards — berating himself for a poor stroke or walking to square leg after an airy waft. In the World T20 match against Bangladesh earlier this year, when a section of the Bengaluru crowd chanted his name, he pointed to the ‘India’ on his jersey front, urging them to cheer the team. A few days before that, when be brought up his fifty against Pakistan in Kolkata, he saluted his childhood hero, Sachin Tendulkar, who sat in the crowd.
As much as Kohli has tried to play it down, the Tendulkar comparisons have been inevitable. Over the last six months Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag, Shane Warne, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev, Mike Hussey, and Brett Lee have all had their say. TV studios and social media has been rife with debate on who is the greater batsman. “Tendulkar gave you hope,” wrote Pranay Sanklecha, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy, in the ESPNcricinfo website in March. “As long as he was there, the match wasn’t done. But Kohli gives you certainty. When he comes in, the match is done.”
This is an interesting debate but it is also a limiting one. For Kohli is not a duplicate of one cricketer but an amalgam of many. He is technically compact, yet able to shred bowling attacks. He has set up games when opening — as Tendulkar did in ODIs over many years — and finished from the middle order — as MS Dhoni has habitually managed. He has been both solid and extravagant, defensive and attacking.
Unlike many Indian batsmen before him, who have mastered one format but fallen short of greatness in others, Kohli could end up conquering Tests, ODIs and T20s. He is electric on the field, both inside the ring and on the boundary. And his captaincy — with three series wins out of four — promises plenty.
Here, then, is the ultimate hope from Virat Kohli: that he will meld bits from Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly and Dhoni —combining a gargantuan appetite for runs with a peerless work ethic, backing his instincts as captain while continuing to stay ice-cool during a run-chase. Whether he can turn into a great Test batsman and great captain remains to be seen, but the fact that he is in a position to accomplish so much is in itself a source of wonder.
Siddhartha Vaidyanathan is a writer based in the U.S.
