Endings can be hard. The absence of what we call closure, even harder. Jim Morrison echoes in my ears when I see my favourite batter of all time fatally chase another ball destined to sail over the sixth stump safely on its way to the keeper. This is the end, beautiful friend, goes the doleful refrain in The End.
We all know about it. It was 2011 when Virat Kohli was first 'exposed'. India were playing the West Indies in the West Indies. Having got off to a promising beginning with five one-day hundreds, Virat’s first trial by fire would be against the likes of Fidel Edwards and Ravi Rampaul. With the duo bringing out their nasty short lengths, the 22-year-old found the going tough. Ever the self-flagellating and hardcore results guy, Virat asked himself if he was even made for test cricket.
Harbhajan Singh, his senior teammate, told him that he was. In fact, he’d be doing his talent a huge disservice if he didn’t go on and summit the 10,000-run pinnacle that’s the Oscar of batting. At the time, even those of us who had seen him score his five one-day hundreds in familiar conditions, would be hard-pressed to agree.
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Fourteen years later, he has a little over eight hundred to get to ten thousand. We can ruefully agree that he is at least a couple thousand short. Despite the yearly glimmer of his old self—like the surreal 82* at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, not to mention his hundred in Perth recently—he appears like a tragic Greek hero consigned by a curse to fail spectacularly endlessly. The sorrow of the six-year lull has been eclipsed by identical-seeming failures across venues and regardless of opposition. The End seems to have arrived and yet it’s nowhere in sight. Do we even want to accept it?
It must be the worst time in history to defend him. In November, India—finalists of both the World Test Championships that have taken place so far—suffered the severest of ignominies in test cricket: a whitewash at home. The burden also fell on Virat’s fast dwarfing legendary stature. The debris of low scores and unimpressive dismissals has coiled up around his restless feet. His average has dropped to 47 from the healthy mid-50s. Forever carrying the torch for the away-swinger not interested in him, he's chasing the glorious cover drive like a totem of his silken touch. The struggle is endless. The star seems suspended for aeons in the supernova state.
But he was once a star. One that started out with quite a bang, flipping the bird indecorously near the boundary line. Fans will recall a disgusted scowl painted across his face as an Australian crowd quite used to the extracurricular joys of verbal volleys and sledging, went about teasing the flammable youngster. As Michael Clarke and Mike Hussey piled on the misery over a frail Indian attack at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Virat decided to flash the middle finger to the spectators. The pictures were splashed in the media and criticism flowed from all corners.
What didn’t help was his scores in the series—11, 0, 23 and 9. Custodians of the game’s decorum set about declaring that they told us so about this wilful boy, smugly adding he was no Tendulkar. But then, something flipped. In the third test at Perth, a much-feared typically Australian venue visiting sides have been bounced out thoroughly at, Virat outscored the fading titans of the unit—Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman and Sehwag—with scores of 44 and 76—in yet another losing cause. At Adelaide, another massacre of the Indian bowling followed, the only consolation being an embattled, chubby-cheeked youngster finally coming of age, scoring a hard-fought first test century in the face of intense cornering from the crowd and bullying from the opposition.
The redemption unleashed a torrent of limited-overs hundreds to follow that would become classic Virat Kohli knocks. On the same tour of Australia, he mounted a full-scale demolition of the formidable Lasith Malinga before punishing the wiles of Saeed Ajmal in a credential-confirming 183 versus Pakistan in Dhaka. He then pulverised Australia's ODI side in a home series before heading to South Africa to take on a three-pronged Protea attack comprising Steyn, Morkel and Philander. This was the making of the King Kohli moniker. I was one of the early adopters of the title some might deem corny in the current context, but his unprecedented storming of record books was indeed not only imperious but imperial.
And then he went to England. British cricket analysts had gone on endlessly declaring that the brawn and prowess of the tall English seamers would tower over ill-equipped Indian batters. Led by James Anderson and Stuart Broad, England not only confirmed that foregone conclusion but also engineered another exposé of a batter old-schoolers had waited so long to finally label a fraud. Someone who not too long ago had earned comparisons with Viv Richards was now rescuing his newfound reputation from the corridor of uncertainty.
What lay between him and the End was another tour of Australia. One more failure in the 2014-15 Border-Gavaskar Trophy and he would be done. Then they would tell us we told you so. Had he fixed his game against the moving ball? Was he prepared for Ryan Harris? Did he have a plan for Glenn McGrath understudy Josh Hazlewood, who Australia would unleash in the second test at the Gabba? All of that soon dissipated when Mitchell Johnson, under whose murderous second coming England had freshly come undone in the Ashes, served him the kind of welcome that had left the entire England batting lineup rattled during the Ashes.
Hardly ever has anything else quieted things down in Australian cricket like the gloom and pall that descended after New South Welshman Phil Hughes collapsed at the crease and tragically died two weeks ago in a domestic game after being hit on the back of his head by a Sean Abbott bouncer. But then Johnson decided he’d had enough of the grieving, and the series had to be brought alive. Steaming in with his characteristic side-arm loading stride that would unleash a fast sling-style release, he fired a thunderbolt that kicked from just fuller than usual and rammed into the crest of Virat’s helmet. The customary moment of concern followed before play resumed. After a few watchful initial moments, Virat would settle in, go about rotating the strike and collecting boundaries with his wristy on-drives and gorgeous cover drives, racing to one more hundred at Adelaide.
But it wasn’t just that—it was also Virat finally assuming the mantle he was earmarked for essentially since winning the 2007 U-19 World Cup: captaincy. Gloomy skies didn’t leave India’s side until the fourth day of the game, when they were set 364—still a mountain to climb in test cricket—to win. Joining Murali Vijay with two down for 57, he got to rebuilding once again and completed his second hundred of the test. No visiting batsman had scored 100s in both innings of a test in 53 years in Australia before this. India briefly came close to a historic win but faltered, and fell about 50 runs short.
Any fan who watched that game right through to its heartbreaking end—Ishant Sharma stepping out fatally to Nathan Lyon—will confirm that heartbreak never leaves the memory. It was a 25-year-old then, who showed us what it was like to hope for a ridiculous win. In many ways, the 2014 Adelaide loss was the bones of the famous 2021 Gabba victory.
Despite the long dip in form, Virat’s impact on the game has been unforgettable. And polarising. Every time he has failed, the blame has shifted very quickly from technical weaknesses to 'temperament'—a word that everyone who discusses cricket loves to throw around. In the early years, it had to do with how he conducted himself on the job, his hyper-aggressive celebrations at the fall of a wicket, angry send-offs and verbal spats with opposition players. Regardless of his unusually collected and articulate post-match interactions and genuine moments of bonding with and pride for his team, he would be seen as an exacting bully who would even go after his own players in order to get a result.
Virat’s special relationship with Australia, its crowds, its media (Fox Australia called him the biggest sports jerk, how’s that?) and its grounds, in addition, of course to the many green-and-gold sides he’s played against, often supersedes the maddening statistic that he averages the highest among batsmen visiting the country. Right from scoring close to seven hundred runs on his second tour to setting the template for our past two series wins there—his dominance of them has brought the Indian setup to a point that they’re seen to possess almost home-side familiarity in the backyard of a side associated with scars and trauma for the millennial Indian fan.
It was the same millennial Indian fan who endlessly battled the trauma of India’s crushing loss to Australia in the final of the 2003 ODI World Cup. When a showdown ensued between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds during the 2008 Sydney test, Indians hadn’t gotten used to Bigg Boss fully yet. We were affected by drama, we couldn’t fully consume it, like we do now. Despite a sizeable first innings lead, India lost the game by 122 runs as umpires Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson made a series of howlers. We watched in disbelief as the loss unfolded on the horrendous final day.
Which is why the emergence of Virat Kohli marked a watershed in many fans’ own personal journeys. He's the guy who redeemed us. Our personal demons, our past losses, our generational traumas—everything could be conquered. You didn’t need to be a big, strong bully to put adversity in its place—you just needed to look into the mirror and wise up. It was probably this shift from the image of the non-confrontational Indian top-order batter, known for his gentle stoicism—that has perennially put off old-schoolers. They probably prefer the archaic global identity of the successful, calculated, hardworking Indian, not this pufferfish who was daring to scare sharks away.
Unlike all the previous times when Virat has refused to conform to the standard image of the mild-mannered Indian cricketer—his current dry run has strangely been seen as related with his evolving role as a family man and an increasingly mellow, gregarious opponent. One could put it down to the supposed maturity that’s supposed to hit you in the 30s, or the awareness that you’re being watched and studied in your role as a model husband and a father of two young children, both parts his public conduct suggests he’s excelled at.
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To be sure, it has to do with learning to genuinely detach from the outcome after his control over his performance has ended. You see Virat lean more into a spiritual side that’s always existed inside him. He has gone from being the scrappy teen who scored a century for Delhi on the day following his father’s demise to the man who will unapologetically drop out of a major test series to be there for his family or for the birth of his child (Dhoni happened to choose the opposite). Talk of him shifting base to London has picked up pace, much to the displeasure of fans. Hah—clearly those running surveillance on Virat Kohli have gone from detractors to detractors and fans now.
This sort of a parasocial obsession with someone who has impacted the zeitgeist in a major way is inevitable when you consider it has to do with a hard-won disruptor and shining commander who has led the emotional redemption of a whole generation. I mean it does feel that when Virat is not giving snarling send-offs even to opposition tailenders or demanding that his bunch of priceless fast bowlers pound the strip of grass until the opposition’s batters cave in—he’s somehow not at his best. A calm Virat isn’t good news, like the wild way many fans back home rallied behind him when he manhandled 19-year-old Sam Konstas in Melbourne.
Interestingly—and this wouldn’t be a popular claim to make—the strange duality of what fans are allowed seems to make near-perfect sense. It was patience and perseverance that brought him his iconic MCG chase special versus Pakistan in 2022. But even a little more of the same thing is wont to bring the same kind of indignation that you feel when an iconic jazz club is torn down to start a samba and tapas place.
Even if fans aren’t allowed a say in how Virat Kohli chooses to pursue personal happiness and contentment, those invested in the legend of Virat Kohli are surely allowed some dissatisfaction. It’s just that we must soon accept, with a sigh, that like all these years, we must make peace with what he chooses. To hazard an unspeakably lame cliche about decline and human fragility—we must see him as human, beautifully flawed and increasingly vulnerable as he slowly trudges down the summit. Our approval doesn't matter when it comes to how he wants to get back to the base.
Virat has been written off quite a few times but the wait has gotten a bit longer this time. Australian great and one of India's chief tormentors of the 2000s, Ricky Ponting recently remarked that another player, if they went five years with just two test centuries (he made it three in six years in Perth), would be nowhere near the national side right now.
He is right, but the thing is, Virat is the guy who redeemed us. If he goes out with a soundless flash in the void versus England later this year, will you please accept that this is it? If he chooses to dig his heels in and nail that cover drive—well, won’t you be entertained? It hurts to set you free, like Jim Morrison says in The End.