There Was No One Like Virat Kohli. There Never Will Be

For someone who grew up in the ’90s and the early aughts, I hadn’t seen a player quite like Virat Kohli.

He was nothing like the men I had been taught to admire—Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, even Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Calm, composed and circumspect. The men who knew how to play the game in more ways than one. I couldn’t relate to those men but knew better than to not be in reverence. They were the greats—championships, trophies, records aplenty. I liked them for sure, but it never went beyond that. I wouldn’t want to do nothing but watch them play. Stop everything and run to the television screen when they came to bat. Their fans might completely not get it but for me, they weren’t people I admired or looked up to.

They were just cricketers—damn good at their game. They were not Virat Kohli, I realised, once he came on to the scene.

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They couldn’t have been. No one else can be. That’s the thing about King Kohli. For the gentleman’s game, he was the brash young adult, willing to break all rules. He had the talent and the fire. To win, at every cost. Fight to the finish. Live for victory. It wasn’t just passion—it was something more. He was consumed by his game, and nothing else mattered. His game was evocative—you could feel your nerves pulsating. Isn’t that what a remarkable athlete is supposed to do? Make you care about it in a way you’ve never had.

People who had never much cared began doing it. Men, women, children, old people, everyone knew when Virat Kohli was playing and when he got it. It was like Tendulkar in his prime, my dad would say. He was my generation’s Tendulkar. Actually, at the risk of offending a million people, he was better. My dad never screamed at the TV screen when Tendulkar was playing—I've done it many times for Kohli.

He brought a certain amount of irreverence to the game. Getting into spats on the field, aggression and abuses in adequate amounts. He didn’t care whether you liked him or not. Nor did it matter if you wanted him to lose. He just wanted to win. It always made me respect him even more. A player isn’t supposed to be caring about all that noise. He just has to play the game and play it well. All that talk about being graceful, humble, blah, blah, blah... let those commentators say what they have to. It’s there to job to wax eloquent—Kohli's job was to play for victory. That’s what defines a player.

I had the honour of interviewing him for a story back in 2019. It wasn’t a particularly good phase in his game. I remember him looking and feeling focused and fixated. When I asked if he was aware of what people had been saying—we had recently lost the World Cup that year—he said he was, looking straight at me, and he didn’t care. I came back to my workplace smiling wide. I wouldn’t ever forget that moment.

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The day he overtook Tendulkar’s record of the most number of ODI centuries, he reached a summit many believed wasn’t even possible. But when he looked up at the sky—remembering his father—and then bowed in front of Tendulkar sitting in the stands, it no longer was about any record. That a player so impressive existed was all we were grateful for. To be alive in the Virat Kohli era was all anyone could’ve wanted.

As he bids goodbye to Test cricket—probably his favourite format—it’s a reminder that that era is slowly coming to an end. He’ll still be playing ODIs though. That World Cup awaits in 2027. He was part of the squad when we last won it in 2011—he’d like to bid goodbye with another win, I’m sure. Frankly, I don’t care if we win the cup or not—I'd just like to see Kohli at his finest, most Kohli-like self.

That’s what has come to define cricket for me. It always will.