In a rare and exclusive one-to-one interview, Virat Kohli sat down with Wisden Cricket Monthly magazine editor Jo Harman to discuss his first 10 years as an international cricketer, what life outside of the game looks like for a 21st-century deity and the future of “the most beautiful format”.
This article originally appeared in the September 2018 issue of Wisden Cricket Monthly. Click here to subscribe to the magazine
It’s four years since I first approached Virat Kohli’s team for a sit-down interview with the most in-demand cricketer in the world and after several false leads and probably more than a hundred emails, India’s captain is finally ready and waiting. Well, almost.
As I stand in a corridor outside a hotel room at the Taj Hotel in St James’ Court, London, waiting to be summoned, Kohli has some filming to finish up first. He is the subject of a National Geographic documentary as part of a new series in which scientists and psychoanalysts explore the lives of five Indian national icons and attempt to decipher whether geniuses are born or made. Watching Kohli’s 149 at Edgbaston two weeks later, it feels a pertinent question.
By playing and talking about Test cricket with such passion, you’ve helped to give the format a real shot in the arm. Do you have concerns for its future though?
In a few countries, yes. It all depends on the awareness of people who watch the game. If you take a country like South Africa or Australia or England, they have big crowds for Test matches because people understand the sport. It’s literally living life over five days. There are so many ups and downs and even when you’ve done well you’ve got to keep coming back and doing it all over again. There are no guarantees in life either. If you’ve had a good day it doesn’t mean that the next day is going to be good automatically. You’ve got to work towards it. Or if you’ve had a bad day there’s no option of staying at home. I think that if you really understand the sport, if you really love the sport, you understand Test cricket and you understand how exciting it is. I cannot explain to you the job satisfaction that you get when you do well in Test cricket, because you know how demanding it is. It’s the most beautiful format of the game. I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere. I don’t even see it getting compressed to four days.
You see four-day Test matches as a backward step?
Definitely. It should not be tinkered with.
Are you in favour of the forthcoming Test Championship?
I think that is going to give a huge push to Test cricket. It makes every series more competitive, and there’s going to be ups and downs throughout the Championship, which I really look forward to. The teams that love playing Test cricket are always going to be passionate about it. And it also depends on the system you have back home as well. If you’re not going to give more importance to first-class cricket, then people are going to lose motivation to play the longest format of the game. And with the T20 format coming in I think there’s far greater responsibility on all the cricket boards across the world to treat first-class cricket really well, because if the facilities and the standard goes up, then the motivation always stays. You don’t want players to get into that mindset where they’re finding the easy way out.
India haven’t played a Test match against Pakistan during your career. Do you think that will change, and is it a match you’d like to play in given the opportunity?
They have such a quality bowling attack that obviously as a batsman I would love to face them. It could happen but it’s not something that I have any aspirations of or something that I really want badly. I don’t pinpoint things anymore. If you asked me 10 years ago whether I would be here in my life, be having a career like I’ve had, I wouldn’t even dream of it. So I am very happy with how life is going and I’m pretty happy taking every day and series as it comes.
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Kohli speaks with such verve and feeling about the game, and has such strong views on its future, that before we wrap up I ask, slightly tongue in cheek, whether he’d consider a job at the ICC or BCCI when he calls time on his playing career. He laughs. A lot.
“The reason I do so many things at one time is to not be in a position of having to do something in life after I’m done,” he says. “I want to be able to spend time with my family, give a good life to my kids, travel with my wife and just enjoy life for a few years. I don’t want to think about anything else. I will have done this for too long to be able to come back immediately into the game. If there are any changes in the system required, I would always take that step for cricketers, not just because I want to be seen on TV. I’ve had enough of that. I get that on a daily basis.
“I understand that life is much larger than any of this and before I started to play cricket life was there, and it’s going to continue after. I just want to be able to enjoy everything and not have cricket as the only identity in my life and have nothing else to look forward to or have any knowledge of. I want to keep learning.”
