Virat Kohli has built a team prepared to fight and emote in sync with his tone and even if you dislike the brand of cricket they play, there’s no denying that this is the greatest Indian Test side ever, writes Rohit Sankar.

Scroll through Getty Images for pictures of the day five action of the Lord’s Test between England and India and for every England player dismissed, there’s a Virat Kohli image; zappy, vigorous and expressive, each capable of transmogrifying into one of the emojis on your phone’s keypad.

“For 60 overs they should feel like hell out there,” a few claimed to have heard Virat Kohli say in the huddle as India swarmed in for one final go at England on day five.

Whether he actually said it or not, that’s exactly how England felt for 51.5 overs in their backyard, beginning with a snorter first up from Jasprit Bumrah that rapped Rory Burns on the glove and saw the sea of Indian fielders crowd around him with words and intimidatory glances.

Well, except one ball maybe.

Over 26.3 — Jos Buttler looked to play away from his body against Bumrah and a thick edge flew to first slip where Kohli shelled a sitter.

We saw it. The world saw it. Social media trolled him. Dropped-catch success percentages flared up from random users all over Twitter. What they probably failed to see, or chose to ignore, is Kohli walking over to Bumrah at the end of the over and apologising. Kohli, sitting with Wriddhiman Saha in the stands on a short break, and replaying the dropped catch rather animatedly even as Buttler continued to take England to safety, is viral content. Anything Kohli does is.

But this Indian team isn’t one that gets bogged down by one error, whoever it is that makes it. They hunt like a pack and have each other’s back. One mistake is often flooded over by a million other rights. That’s how great teams are. They make mistakes, but they also create more opportunities.

It’s not to say the Kohli brand is to everyone’s taste. For fans that started loving the sport watching the likes of Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar or Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev or MS Dhoni, people who embody cricket as a gentleman’s game, the Kohli way is almost always too much.

The on-field persona of this team is shaped to mirror Virat Kohli’s. “You go after one of our guys, all 11 of us will come right back at you,” KL Rahul proudly stated after winning the Player of the Match award. It’s not a comment you’d have associated with an Indian player in the pre-Virat Kohli era.

“A bit of tension on the field really helped us and really motivated us to finish this game,” Kohli said after the win. Rahul echoed similar sentiments at the post-match press conference.

This team thrives on emotions, plays with emotions. It’s possibly why the declaration came two overs and 12 runs after lunch on day five rather than during the break. Frustrated by the fightback from the tail, England were miffed further by the timing of the declaration. To top it off, the same tail-enders were thrown the new ball to build on the adrenaline still pumping through them. And they did, with two crucial early strikes.

Every new batter was greeted with words as men flocked around them, so much so that Dinesh Karthik on air wondered how many men were on the screen at one point. Look, they are led by a skipper who has the audacity to tell the greatest fast bowler of this generation that “this isn’t your backyard” when playing at a venue in his country where he has seven mentions in the honour’s board.

A bit over the top? Maybe. But so are the team’s achievements. Under Kohli, India has more Test wins than under any skipper, a win percentage 13 more than under MS Dhoni, more wins than any other Indian captain in overseas Tests after losing the toss. Under him, India have undergone a fast bowling revolution.

“At no point did we not think about chasing the score down,” Kohli had said in 2014 at the end of his first match as Test captain, one where he led by example and nearly toppled the Aussie boat in Adelaide. ‘Belief’ is a key word in Kohli’s Indian side and one game into his captaincy career, Kohli had put a red underline beneath the word.

Gabba 2021 wouldn’t have been possible for a side that did not have belief. Make no mistake. Kohli’s absence from the Test makes it no less his victory. To be fair, India have had quite a few heartbreaks too under Virat Kohli, but that the team put itself in such positions ever so often in overseas Tests is credit to their quality.

If it happens once, it’s a miracle. What if it happens twice? Lord’s 2021 is as good, if not better than Gabba 2021. A fast bowling masterclass on day five of an overseas Test is as distant as this side can get from previous generations of Indian cricket teams.

That right there is what separates Virat Kohli’s men from the rest. This is a side Virat Kohli has carefully crafted. They might be annoying, in your face all the time, sporting beards fathers detest and mouthing words mothers hate, but like it or not, they know to win, and will push themselves to any extent to win. You could dislike the brand of cricket they play, but you couldn’t point a finger at their record.

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