NEW DELHI: Virat Kohli was the loudest, proudest flagbearer for Tests at a time of great churn in the modern game. In many ways, his exit creates a void in India’s red-ball cricket larger than the one left by the retirement of Sachin Tendulkar. No wonder the powers that be were so desperate to retain him for the upcoming series in England.If Tendulkar was sheer poetry and perfection with bat in hand, Kohli was perfect prose; excellence personified. He was also many things at once: band leader, vocal frontman, brains of the show, spine of the lineup, even an endlessly energetic orchestrator of in-your-face chaos if the situation warranted. He could get under the opponent’s skin in ways very few Indian cricketers could. Above all, he was a relentless pursuer of Test-match wins.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Kohli wasn’t as supremely gifted as Tendulkar but some disciplinary setbacks early in his international career led to deep introspection. That he had steel was evident years earlier, when he continued to play a first-class game despite the untimely death of his father. This time, forged by inner fire and a blazing need to justify his potential, Kohli whipped himself into a beacon of self-denying, military discipline, transforming both himself and Indian cricket in the process. He made sure he could not be dropped again.Many within the setup squirmed at his excesses, especially the unrelenting focus on fitness issues, but Kohli knew cultural change doesn’t come easy. If Sourav Ganguly was the progenitor of Indian cricket’s now-familiar chutzpah and MS Dhoni the white-ball mastermind, Kohli was the beating heart of India’s long-elusive overseas Test success.The louder he was on the field, the more self-restrained he was off it. As India’s most successful Test captain ever, he steadfastly drilled into shape a new generation of cricketers who would break new ground with Kohli at the helm. His emphasis on building a battery of fast bowlers fit enough to bowl long spells was no less than revolutionary.
Of course, Kohli was the country’s most prolific batter too during that period. From around 2014 to when the pandemic disrupted India’s calendar, the runs simply flowed. His bat wasn’t a mighty cleaver but a precise surgeon’s knife, the bottom hand the dominant force, timing his ally. Kohli showed, perhaps more than any other of his batting contemporaries, that a classical approach could be adopted successfully across formats, even in this day and age.He is the only Indian captain to hit five centuries in a calendar year, and he did it twice, in 2017 and 2018. Kohli beat Don Bradman and Rahul Dravid’s record of scoring double centuries in three successive Test series by scoring them across four series, among many, many other milestones too numerous to mention.Kohli, however, is not defined by numbers alone. In whites, he was bigger than the sum of his parts. Unlike lesser mortals, his individual batting form would thrive under the pressures of captaincy — the batting average of 54.80 as captain plummets to 37.40 in the 55 Tests he played under others.There will now be endless debate on some of his best centuries, from Perth to Adelaide to Johannesburg to Edgbaston. There will be talk surrounding his best overseas series, from Australia in 201415 to England in 2018. It can be argued, though, that Kohli rose and fell in Australia, a country whose combative style of play he admired deeply.From the twin tons in his first Test as captain in Adelaide — the second innings 141 in vain pursuit of 364, in particular, was era-defining, goosebump-inducing brilliance — to the sad decline on the recent tour, Kohli probably knew he had come full circle.
This time, he was booed at the MCG after a fatal mix-up, was out repeatedly poking outside off and seemed frazzled even when he pursued restraint. Something was disturbingly off, and it has been for a while now. The connection had snapped, and perhaps Kohli’s call to retire is apt.We may now realise that the country which gave the world the IPL also kept the fires burning in the longest format, with equal passion, entirely due to Kohli’s commitment to the format, his ability to recognise its legacy-defining stage. No wonder his farewell statement included the lines, “There’s something deeply personal about playing in whites.”With Rohit Sharma also retiring, the greatest fear now is that the format itself may not attract as many eyeballs in the near future, at least in India. With Kohli’s exit, the contours of India’s Test campaigns will fundamentally change. The emissary has departed. The spark is gone. Hopefully, the will to excel which he instilled will remain.
