The King of Good Times

On the lad from Delhi who made white look bright

Words don’t come more lyrical than those written by Rohit Brijnath. “Retirements,” he tells us, “are sentimental occasions. We measure an athlete one last time, place him in history, use flattery to camouflage his flaws and walk back in time to when we were both younger.”

The instinct on this walk is to recall moments of incandescence, when the supernova burned at its most brilliant. You think of the time Roger Federer finished the first set of a Wimbledon final quicker than it takes to heat a bowl of chicken; you think of Zinedine Zidane, at 34, making a mockery of a star-studded Brazil side; Phelps breaking seven world records at Beijing; Bolt flying so far ahead he could chest thump his way to an Olympic gold.

Kohli at Centurion? Perth? Birmingham?

In the moments between reading the announcement and watching it cascade through headlines, that liminal space where one reconciles with the future before stepping into it, the pictures that popped into my mind did not even have Kohli in them. Well, not his face.

It’s late-afternoon in Adelaide. Players in soil-stained whites are casting long shadows across the turf. It will be sunset soon. Glorious, golden, pink Adelaide sunset. Worth travelling across continents for. Wriddhiman Saha, India’s wicketkeeper, stoic in temperament, dances down the track to a Nathan Lyon delivery. He shouldn’t. India need around 80 runs to win, but with only five wickets remaining and a tail that barely bats, prudence lies in securing the hatches and taking the draw.

Virat Kohli stands at the non-striker’s end, with his back to the camera. This is his first match as India’s Test captain. With the bat, he has dragged India to the gates of a barely-believable win, but maybe the rest of the climb is too steep. For a team ranked seventh in the world, a draw against Australia in their backyard is perfectly honourable.

Saha spanks Lyon for four, and there you hear Kohli’s voice pierce through the frame. “SHOT!”.

The timbre of that scream is unmistakable. I spent twenty years in Delhi, and must’ve played at least a thousand football games across its parks. This is the sound of a teammate pushing you toward something beyond your own self-belief. Variations of it can be found everywhere in the city - at a neighbourhood cricket match; at the corner table in a Delhi University cafeteria, where four guys are hunched over, scheming to get their friend to ask his crush out; or a friend proposing an 80km round-trip for parantha and chai. Often suffixed with terms of endearment - yaar, bhai, etc - but always delivered in a tone that positions you at arm’s length from beauty.

Wriddhiman Saha possessed an impressive quiver of shots, but his real game was obduracy in whites. He was the solid, defiant rock in the Indian middle order. All of a sudden, here he was, taking on Nathan Lyon on a crumbly day five pitch, fully aware of the abyss underneath if he slips.

But what do you do when the captain himself locks eyes with you, and asks you to lose your gentle jabs and go for the punch to the face? You hit. You connect once, you connect twice, and then you take one back. You’re done; a batter has one life. Risk stared back at you, and yet you went for the punches because the guy in your corner squeezed your shoulders and said, “Let’s fucking do this.”

The sun slips behind the Adelaide Cricket Ground’s stands, painting the skies in a warm shade of gold. The Australians are celebrating a poignant victory. Kohli walks in for the post-match interview, shirt untucked, cap perched atop his head, kit bearing some vivid marks of battle.

“Very proud of my boys,” he begins. More words follow, but these five suffice.

A successful athlete’s life is sprinkled with a generous portion of milestone moments. Retro-fitting narratives onto them is both easy and tempting. After all, what is a sport but a million movies running in parallel?

But, this is no retro-fitting. It is one thing for accomplished batters like Virat Kohli and Murali Vijay to chase a tall total against Australia on the last day of a game. But when less-equipped batters are injected with the same confidence and asked to maintain the tempo, if not raise it, you know that the melody has fundamentally changed. That moment - when Kohli urged Saha to chase victory against the world’s most formidable team on their soil - marks the juncture where Indian Test cricket took a hard right into an eight-lane highway.

Indian cricket boasts of a proud lineage of technicians, stretching from Lala Amarnath to Vinoo Mankad, and Sardesai and Pataudi to Bedi, Gavaskar, Kapil, Tendulkar - you get the point. And yet, for all its virtuosos, the collective results rarely ever matched the promise.

See, the legacy of an Indian Test team has always been measured by its success abroad. At home, India have, throughout their ninety-year history, ranged from above average to formidable. The subcontinent’s unique playing conditions demand specialised skills seldom found elsewhere, affording even half-decent Indian outfits a substantial advantage on home soil. But, for eight decades, this specialisation kept revealing its limitations overseas, where cricketers needed an entirely different toolbox, sometimes the polar opposite of their training and education. And when found wanting, these good cricketers shrunk into timid passersby.

“I grew up watching Indian cricket teams that played Test matches like they were apologizing for being there,” Prem Panicker says, in this essay.

There were these page-turning moments - like the twin-series wins in 1971, the England tour of 1986 - but they were scattered flickers of spark surrounded by damp air. The Indian Test team was eventually garlanded with an unfortunate tagline: “Lions at home, lambs abroad.”

Sourav Ganguly arrived and demanded his team play with spine, a demand he could make because Tendulkar, Dravid, and Kumble had his back. But even his team could only win the occasional game. They were, at best, competitive. Dravid and Dhoni, later, brought cerebral approaches to their captaincy, preferring to engage opponents on a chessboard rather than a boxing ring.

An Indian Test team never quite went for it.

Until that afternoon in Adelaide. Just three months previously, India had been thrashed 3-1 in England, and Kohli, in ten full innings, had aggregated 136 runs. His dismissals could be predicted before he took guard. Battered, bruised, broken, bullied.

Kohli sought out Sachin Tendulkar, Lalchand Rajput, and pretty much any one with possible solutions. On the eve of the Adelaide Test, with Dhoni injured, Kohli was given the Test captain’s blue blazer for the first time. Australia were still getting back to feet from the shock of Phil Hughes’ tragic death, but they’d come hard. They always did.

On Kohli’s first ball of the series, a Mitchell Johnson bouncer pinged into his helmet. You could hear the collective gasp from outer space. Instead of sledging him, every Australian fielder walked over and checked in. What was going through Kohli’s mind, you wonder?

“I am glad I got hit on the helmet first ball. That literally opened my eyes and I was concentrating much better than probably I would have in that particular game. After that I decided that whenever he is going to bowl short, I am going to take him on. I am not going to back out.”

First dig: 115 crisp runs. On the fourth evening, after Australia set India a massive target, Kohli told his team that they would pursue victory regardless of its apparent impossibility. On the bus ride to the team hotel, Mahendra Singh Dhoni slipped in next to Kohli. Dhoni warned him of the limitations of the batting lineup and the risks of pressing the pedal too hard. It was a long tour and losing the first Test would set them back. There are things you can do that others can’t, Dhoni offered, as an olive branch for pragmatism. Kohli replied simply, “We'll never know until we try, na?”

The next morning, Mitchell Johnson, Ryan Harris, Nathan Lyon - no one could get near him. When they pitched full, he drove and flicked; when they went slightly short, he pulled off the front foot; when they tried to bounce him, he went to the back leg and pulled with even greater venom. The Kohli of 2012, the Kohli of England 2014, the brash, uncouth, white-ball rocket who didn’t seem to have the wares for the red ball - all dissolved into history under the percussive symphony emanating from his bat that afternoon.

India lost that Adelaide Test by 48 painful runs, but it remains the high point of Virat Kohli the Test batter and the Test captain. He walked through fire, and goaded his team to join him.

“Draw is the last resort. I don’t mind risking a loss to win a game.” - Kohli, a few months later, here.

The Kohli of Adelaide 2014 looked different too. He had the contours of a proper athlete, almost Australian, a far cry from the lad from Delhi we had gotten used to. He was en route to becoming a Djokovic-lite whose abs had abs. He gave up carbs, cheat meals, and soda. For what joy? For the thrill of running a two after placing the ball at the hands of a fielder, and then repeating it five times in the same over.

Not everyone carries this monkish pursuit of all-round greatness, but Kohli pushed his team to treat fitness like they’d treat a key technical skill. It was a non-negotiable. They had to chase every possible run and ball.

Virat was a predominantly front-foot, forward-press batter, even against the fastest bowlers on the bounciest pitches, and that reflected in the way he thought about the game. Any adversary - whether ball, pitch, opposition, or ingrained caution within his own team - demanded confrontation. Attack represented not only the best form of defence but the only path to victory.

This approach would define the next seven years of Indian cricket. Virat, the world’s premier batter, scaling new peaks with metronomic regularity, took the round blue India badge - well-versed with skill, resilience, and dignity - and infused it with chutzpah and fire.

Cricket’s primary exponents of chutzpah and fire are fast bowlers. Every great team in history has relied on their kind. So, Virat sent for them. And he didn’t want just one or two, but a sedan full of them, engines revving. Then he went one further. He transformed India into a bowling-heavy team, entirely comfortable with depriving himself and fellow batters of additional insurance.

After a Test match in 2015, he declared, “I don’t mind compromising on batting averages as long as we’re winning Test matches. That's our main concern. We are not playing for records or batting averages.”

Such sentiment bordered on sacrilege in Indian cricket. Unable to flaunt a culture of sustained collective success, Indian batting and spin bowling are its two proudest institutions. And besides, Virat was no ordinary batter or captain. From early in his career, he was marked as the one to carry Indian batting’s torch. And just as his batting was beginning to hit escape velocity, here he was, speaking of subordinating his batting average to team victories.

But that’s Virat Kohli. He always went head first, both hands stretched forward, legs locked.

Good bowlers bowl to pick wickets most of the time. Kohli forced them to chase wickets all the time by placing catchers and attacking fielders even when convention would’ve suggested a slightly balanced approach. And when his bowlers succeeded, he celebrated with the kind of vigour you see at the final whistle of World Cup finals. He leapt a metre in the air, wore a scowl on his face, fists locked to the point of going red, like a hound who had just tasted blood. Then he celebrated every other wicket the same way too.

Always charged up. Picture courtesy: AFP

“We understand competitiveness, this desire to outdo the next man, because we’re frequent witnesses to it. With some athletes it’s naked (Rafael Nadal), with others disguised (Lionel Messi). With Kohli you didn’t need to know cricket to see it. It was his body’s only language. He was a study in defiance, a portrait in aggressiveness, making you think of electric currents and welterweight boxers. Always alert, gesticulating, celebrating, urging, snarling. Always alive.” - Rohit Brijnath, here

Around two thousand words into this essay, and we haven’t even spoken about Virat Kohli the Test batter. Not enough, at least, though I wonder if any number of words could ever suffice for what we witnessed when Kohli strode to the crease in whites, collar turned up, shirt tucked without a single crease, staring down the bowler beginning his run-up. It will take more than one essay to convey the inevitability Kohli brought to the crease for those five, perhaps six, incandescent years. Or to make you hear the sound of Kohli. There were days when the crack from his forward defence foretold the cover drive waiting to be unleashed.

Great musicians are best heard live. You had to see Kohli in the flesh, feel the sound from his bat hit your ears and work its magic through your body. The thin layer of hair on the forearms, the even thinner layer on the back of your neck - all upright, in awe of this divine creation of mind and muscle. Kohli was a show for the senses, an experience that, not to be esoteric, cannot be fully replicated on highlight reels and Best Of compilations. Box office is an overused metaphor suggesting dynamism and spark, but Kohli was legitimately a running action sequence whether in defence or attack. Facing 90-mile-per-hour deliveries or standing at the non-striker's end, ostensibly passive by cricket standards, Kohli remained coiled - shoulders and core locked, glutes engaged, ready to launch into a sprint.

The most remarkable aspect of Kohli's Test batting was that he reached rarified air with a technique constructed brick by painstaking brick. His gifts were evident - an eye that could pick the ball’s trajectory before it left the bowler’s fingers, hands that wielded a three-pound bat with the lightness of a badminton racquet. But those are gifts best suited to limited-overs cricket, where the ball rarely moves and the pitches are tailored for batters. Kohli lacked the naturally soft hands or instinct for the risky delivery that often underpin great Test careers. He played with hard hands, frequently with his weight pressing forward - features that are acceptable in the subcontinent, perilous elsewhere. And yet, he always found ways. His first England tour ended in bloodshed; the second got him 593 runs in five Tests. His first Australian tour nearly paused his Test career; the follow-up yielded nearly 700 runs in four Tests.

There was a time, maybe around mid-2019, when no batting record - in either format - was safe from a Kohli chase. A hundred international centuries felt reachable, such was the rate at which he was churning them out. Even accounting for inevitable decline - how bad could it get, really? - he was going to sneak up to Tendulkar’s lofty mountains.

How bad could it get, indeed. Between December 2019 and January 2025, Virat Kohli played 39 Test matches, averaging a lowly 30. In that time, he scored a mere three Test centuries - none of them particularly memorable. It was a gargantuan decline. And yet, look through the haze, lean forward, and you’ll find knocks that reveal the magician underneath the torn thrift-shop clothes. Though form and touch deserted him, his spirit and fight remained intact.

The 62 against England on a Chennai bunsen burner, the 79 against South Africa at Cape Town last year. These weren’t typical Kohli knocks, and yet, in so many ways, they revealed Kohli’s skin. Go back in time, and Kohli’s career is bedecked with this specific genre of innings. Behind the pulls, the drives, the shoulder barges, the expletives, Virat Kohli lived for the satisfaction of enduring when circumstances conspired against his survival.

The day he found he could no longer survive, he began packing his bags.

When Sunil Gavaskar played his final Test in 1987, Indian cricket braced for decline. You don’t replace a Gavaskar. Two years later, a curly-haired 16-year-old, born and reared on the same patch of red soil as Gavaskar, went out to bat against Wasim, Waqar, Imran, and Qadir. For twenty-four years, Sachin Tendulkar stood sentinel. In his final match, as he returned to the pavilion after a pristine 74, descending from Wankhede staircase was a broad-shouldered twenty-five-year-old from Delhi, tattoos all over his arms, bat twirling within his gloves. He took guard and dispatched his first delivery to the boundary. The baton was passed and Kohli was sprinting.

That baton weighed a hundred kilos. In a young India that was used to getting bullied in the sport, Gavaskar brought hope and resilience. He stood tall, and with him, India dropped its slouch and stood straight up. Tendulkar took this resilience and added ambition. India had just opened itself up for global trade, and here was a boy from its financial and cricket capital, sending the world’s finest bowlers to the fences, daily. He transcended the sport to become a cultural symbol, national identity, India’s ambassador for athletic excellence. The country paused when Tendulkar batted.

Kohli took on the weight of a nation that was bursting at the seams with confidence and entitlement. And he did it at a time when cameras followed you into your drawing rooms, gyms, airport lounges. Unlike Gavaskar or Tendulkar, Kohli couldn’t recede into a cocoon to navigate the sine waves of this life that he had run into.

And look where took Indian cricket. From number 7 in a table of ten, to multiple world number 1 titles. From being known as lambs with visas, to outbowling Australia in Australia and winning two away series’ on the bounce.

Maybe, before we go, it is worth revisiting one afternoon in London, when Kohli’s India - the idea that germinated in the dressing room at Adelaide all those years back - reached its blazing zenith.

The Indian team are at Lord’s, walking down the wooden stairs, into the long room, past a hundred suited geriatrics who have God Save The Queen as their ringtone. And they are walking with their chests out, chins tilted skywards. Once on the grass, Kohli drags them into a huddle, and says, “For sixty overs, they should feel hell.”

Hell, it indeed was. Bumrah, Siraj, Shami, and Ishant reduced the English batters into a gooey, slobbering mess. The close-in fielders swarmed the batters every chance they got. Kohli went within an inch of their ears and told them what he thought of the excessive fat in fish and chips in about six different languages.

It took India 51 overs to swipe out England that afternoon. It will take a few decades before those who watched it stop talking about it. Barring a couple of catches, Kohli didn’t have much tangible contribution. And yet, that entire afternoon had Kohli stamped on it. It doesn’t happen without him.

How fitting, then, that the day that turned out to be his last in Test whites, Virat Kohli was India’s stand-in captain? He leaves as India’s most successful in Tests, amongst the most successful in cricket history.

Then there’s the small matter of nine thousand Test runs and a prolonged peak that rivalled, emulated, even occasionally beat - in runs and resonance - most other batting peaks that Test cricket has seen.

The baton passed from Gavaskar and Tendulkar was well-held, honoured, its prestige raised beyond anyone’s imagination. And, best of all, to paraphrase the lyrics of the timeless song he has used to announce his final bow, he did it his way.

Well played, Virat.