Virat Kohli spoke at length about all things life and cricket at the RCB Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit on Saturday. Aadya Sharma, who was at the venue, writes on the revealing experience.
Very rarely does an A-list athlete put his thoughts into words like Virat Kohli does. It’s not always because they don’t want to, but they can’t. We imagine famous faces behind a mic to instinctively turn orators. Put it in front of him, and Kohli actually does.
Across a whole hour on Saturday (March 15), Kohli dipped into different phases and facets of his life, but urged you to not go any deeper. For over a decade now, he’s been Indian cricket’s pin-up model, pestered by cameras, mics and countless unknown faces every step he walks.
The world is not ready to ease up, but Kohli is.
Probably for the first time, Kohli spoke freely about life after, without really confirming anything. “You seem at peace. The energy coming out of you is very peaceful and calm” said Isa Guha as Kohli sat next to her at the RCB Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit in Bengaluru.
“My playing is not for achievement, it has pretty much come down to just the pure joy and enjoyment I loved to begin with, and as long as that is intact, I will continue playing the game,” Kohli said.
“Don’t get nervous, I am not making any announcements”.
We don’t know if Kohli’s going to take that call in four months or four years, but his words gave a clear understanding of how he perceives the idea of retirement. It’s unlikely to be impulsive, and the competitiveness inside will probably fight him to sign off until he actually does.
When Guha asked him about his lowest point, he mentioned the 2014 England tour as an example, but he also spoke about the recent tour to Australia, admitting that another trip may never happen.
“The more recent Australia tour is the most fresh. The tour of England in 2014 was what bothered me the most. I might not have an Australia tour in four years’ time.”
It’s difficult to remember when Kohli indicated even a rough timeline for the end of his career.
“It [England 2014] was not a do-or-die, might not be as intense as the disappointment around you, then you start burdening yourself way more.
“That’s something I have experienced in Australia as well because I got a good score in the first Test. I thought: ‘Right, let’s go’. This is going to be another big series. Doesn’t turn out that way.”
Kohli explained the cycle of thoughts that went through after India’s 3-1 loss, and how he realised he was still safely away from the R-question.
“For me, it’s just the acceptance: okay, fine. This is what happened. I am going to be honest with myself. Where do I want to go? What are my energy levels like? I am not sitting here in 48-72 hours time to make a decision, then you go, spend time with family. Sit down. Let everything calm down and see how I feel in a few days. In five-six days, I was excited to go to the gym again.”
“I was like – okay fine, it’s all good. I don’t need to tweet anything now. So it’s all okay”.
For many, it’s difficult to dissociate Kohli from aggression. For years, he was the brash and arrogant fight-picker to the opposition. “Aggression is what helps me stay at the top,” he once said. “I won’t change or trade that for anything in the world”. Greg Chappell once called him the “proponent of all-round aggression”.
For some, he still is. It’s definitely not the same for Kohli though.
"It's naturally kind of getting tapered down," he said. "People are not happy about that either. I don't know what to do, to be honest. Earlier, my aggression was a problem, now my calmness is a problem. It's like, I have no idea what needs to be done, that's why I don't focus on it much.”
There was an admission of guilt over his proclivity to toe the line, but Kohli insisted that aggression was his expression of care and the feeling of vindication. While batting, it’s his zone-setting mechanism.
"The kind of person I am, the kind of personality I have - yes, I do have tendencies to kind of go overboard. And I've never shied away from that. But, the starting point is, okay, sometimes it might not have gone out with the right intent, but more often than not, the starting point has been of care.
“I want this all to be an event that helps my team win. That's why you see the celebration that I have when we pick up a wicket in a tight situation. Because I'm like, ‘Yes! This is exactly what needs to happen’. And I represent it like that.
"For a lot of people, it might not have been something that they're able to process. But for me, it always comes from the right place. While batting, of course, it puts me in a different place. Because I don't have small, regular events to get excited about.The end goal is finishing the game. And then, yes, I can represent it the way I used to in the past.
“Again, things are happening naturally with me. It's getting tapered down naturally.”
"My competitiveness has not gone down. So, I think for a lot of people, it's very difficult to process how the competitiveness can be at the same level if the aggression is not. You can still be aggressive in your mind, but you don't necessarily need to express it out there every now and then out of frustration, which I have - I mean, in the recent past as well, which is not a great thing, to be honest, I don't feel great about those things myself."
The last bit was probably a reference to his Sam Konstas shoulder barge. Somehow, instead of vehemently defending it like the Kohli of old, he decided to own it.
Coinciding with Kohli’s tapered aggression has been his growing image as a family-man. Often, Kohli’s been vocal and expressive of his love towards his wife and children, breaking the stereotypical male image of the hero with a hardened heart.
“Role of family is – it’s very difficult to explain to people how grounding it is to just come back to your family every time you have something intense that happens outside. I don't think people have an understanding of what value it brings to a large extent.
“And I feel quite disappointed about that.”
Over the next few sentences, Kohli indirectly poked at the BCCI’s new directives on reduced family time on tour, stitching together an emotionally-aware plea to let players feel more normalcy with their close ones around.
“People who have no control over what’s going on are brought into conversations and put out in the forefront that ‘Oh, maybe they need to be kept away’.
"No. If you ask any player, do you want your family to be around you all the time? He'll be like, yes. I don't want to go to my room and just sit alone and sulk. I want to be able to be normal. And then you can really treat your game as something that is a responsibility. You finish that responsibility, and you come back to life.
"There could be different situations happening in your life all the time. And that allows you to be absolutely normal.
“Not in a vague sense, but in a very real way that you finish your commitment, your responsibility, and then you come back to your house, you're with family, and absolute normalcy in your house and normal family life goes on. So, for me, that is absolutely a priority and of immense value. And I won't miss any opportunities to go out and spend time with my family whenever I can."
Led by Anushka, Kohli attempts to give it back to the world. Few in this domain can be called as privileged as him, but he doesn’t want that to disconnect him from the reality of his roots.
“For both of us, it’s something that feels purposeful at the stage we are in our lives,” he said. “Because we come from a place which – I won’t say we didn’t have privileges, but it wasn’t like how it is today, not even close.
“We are pretty much in touch with how we grew up and where we come from. We are at a certain stage where we don’t know what to do with what we have, and the intent is to always give back”.
“Anushka is absolutely way more passionately inclined towards helping people out than I am. The endeavour is to give back as much as we can. Not to discuss and speak about it too much.”
The last bit is also a larger statement on how Kohli wants to live now. He doesn’t want to post any more of his personal life on social media. He recently shot down the proposal of having his own YouTube channel.
“I can’t give you more hours of my life to sit and talk about myself. I will not be able to give you that much time. I was offered it recently, but I just can’t do it. I’d rather sit on the couch, watch something nice, eat a pack of chips”.
At 36, retirement remains a realistic question, and Kohli doesn’t know what will come after that. “I have absolutely no idea what I am going to do. And it’s fine.”
Last year, when he had retired from T20Is, he’d warned the outside world: "Once I am done, I will be gone, you won't see me for a while”. He’s now made it clear that he craves normalcy, time with his loved ones, more trips with his family – without the massive attention that follows him.
“He’s given two years worth of content,” joked someone as we stepped out of the hall. It definitely was Kohli unplugged, a rare, eloquent insight into the personal life of a cricketing genius.
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