The Cult of Kohli

Like many of his teammates, Aakash Chopra can vividly recall the morning of December 19, 2006. Delhi were playing Karnataka at the Feroz Shah Kotla, and had struggled to 103-5, in response to the visitors’ 446, by stumps the previous evening. One of the not-out batsmen was Virat Kohli, who had turned 18 just a month earlier.

In the early hours of the morning, Prem Kohli, Virat’s father, passed away after a brief illness. You can imagine the players’ surprise then, when the young man turned up at the ground, ready to don pads and gloves and resume batting.

“His eyes were red-rimmed, and he was clearly in pain,” recalls Chopra. “We all asked him to go home. No one expected him to go out and bat. But he did. He made 90. Got a bad decision, leg-before even though there was a thick inside-edge. He went home [for the last rites] only after that.”

Within 18 months, Kohli had led India to an Under 19 World Cup win, with a 74-ball century against West Indies one of the highlights of the tournament. By August 2008, he had won his maiden ODI cap, and in 2011, he was one of the younger members of a World Cup-winning side whose talisman, Sachin Tendulkar, had been his biggest hero while growing up in West Delhi.

On Indian pitches, he often struggled to force the pace because he didn’t play one of the bread-and-butter shots employed on turning tracks. “Before, he hardly used to play the sweep,” says Chopra. “I remember an IPL game against Chennai Super Kings. Dhoni was captain and Ashwin was bowling. Both fine-leg and square-leg were inside the circle, which is so unusual in that format. But Kohli didn’t sweep at the time, and he didn’t even try. Since then, he’s added the sweep, and the cut as well. But though he’s got these new toys in the box, he isn’t tempted to play them all the time.”

Greg Chappell, Indian coach at the time Kohli was making his first strides in domestic cricket, has often said that the three strokes you need are the drive, cut and pull, and that everything else is a variation on those. Kohli plays all three with authority, but it’s not his repertoire that impresses Chopra the most. “The biggest thing about his batting now is the absence of ego. That happens only when you’re completely focused on the team. He could perhaps match Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers [Royal Challengers Bangalore teammates] stroke for stroke, but he never tries. His focus is almost always on being there when the game gets over. And if he has to compromise his attacking instincts in order to do that, he will.”

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As for the man behind the batting records and the billboards, few know what he’s really like. The Instagram posts about the father he still mourns offer some clues, but like Tendulkar, who retreated into a cocoon by the time he was out of his teens, Kohli too gives little away.

“I can’t really tell you what he’s like,” says Chopra. “We hardly talk now. We shake hands when we meet each other, that’s about it. As a younger man, he was good company. Always happy, chirpy, jovial. Even if he was fielding, he would get into competitions about who could get the most direct hits and so on. But now? I can’t say I know him.”

Four years ago, when I interviewed him for the inaugural edition of the Wisden India Almanack, Kohli told me: “When playing cricket as kids, we all pretend to be a particular player. I always wanted to be Sachin. I wanted to bat like him, so I tried to copy the shots he played and hit sixes the way he used to hit them. He was the one player that always made me think: I want to bat like him.”

Now, each time he walks out to bat, the cheers are almost an echo of the deafening chants of ‘Sa-chin, Sa-chin’ that were integral to the soundtrack of Indian cricket for nearly a quarter century. The kid that Chopra once knew has grown up, and millions of fans watch him with the same anticipation once reserved for ‘The Master’. And the many thousands of billboards watch over them.