The Virat Saga

SUCH WAS HIS revolutionary im­pact on the game that for shaping Indian cricket in his image, the least Virat Kohli deserved was a farewell Test match; perhaps even an entire series. Instead, choosing to embrace the same suddenness as his emergence into the format, Kohli bowed out with a simple goodbye on May 12, just a handful of runs short of the 10,000-run mark, months after his final Test match in January and only weeks before India’s next Test cam­paign against England.

In a sport that encourages the greats to achieve land­marks above all else, Kohli ended his red-ball career on the cusp of a massive one, with 9,230 Test runs, placing him fourth on the list of Indian run-getters, behind Sachin Tendulkar (15,921), Rahul Dravid (13,288) and Sunil Gavaskar (10,122). It proves again that Kohli has been beyond the mortal love for milestones, or why else would he have, back in 2019, declared himself on an unbeaten score of 254, when a triple century was there for easy pickings?

Kohli’s focus was always on plotting the team’s better­ment. On this front, taking Indian cricket ahead, he argu­ably had a greater influence than the aforementioned legends, for it was Kohli who altered the way the game was played and consumed, with his refreshing never-say-die approach, be it as a batsman or a leader.

Ushered into a transition­ing Test side as a 22-year-old, Kohli first rose to the might of his own expectations in Australia in 2011-12 with a maiden hundred in the final Test in Adelaide. Incidentally, Dravid and VVS Laxman called it quits right after, forc­ing youngsters such as Kohli and Ravichandran Ashwin to take Indian cricket into a new dawn. Similarly, the recent Border-Gavaskar Trophy, also played and lost by a transi­tioning side, was the setting for the retirements of three veterans—Ashwin, Rohit Sharma and Kohli, the latter two within a week of each other in early May.

It simply had to be in Aus­tralia, for this is where Kohli cut his teeth as a batsman of great pedigree, and also a natural born leader. Handed over the reins by MS Dhoni in the 2014-15 series, Kohli rang in his captaincy debut in Adelaide with twin hun­dreds (115 and 141), albeit in a losing cause, setting the template for a team’s ability to fight against the odds. He would score a total of four Test hundreds on that tour, and seven in Australia over his career, including his final and 30th Test hundred in Perth last year.

Under his stewardship, the victories soon began to pile up, as Kohli imbibed in his team an insatiable hunger to win, often from improbable situations. No one captained India in more Tests than Kohli (68) and won more games (40), far more than his great predecessors in MS Dhoni (27) and Sourav Ganguly (21). At home, Kohli simply didn’t lose a Test series during his long tenure. Not just that, he turned a nation that was historically reliant on spin-bowling into a fast bowling one too.

Some other remarkable achievements cannot be captured by numbers. As a young Kohli went from chubby to chiselled with his new-found passion for fitness, he ended up causing a sporting revolution with his lifestyle. But Kohli’s proudest achievement in the Test arena, undoubtedly, was to lead India to victory for the first time in Australia in its history, beating the hosts 2-1 in 2018-19. Soon after taking India into the first-ever World Test Champion­ship final, he relinquished his leadership, playing the remainder of his career as a specialist batsman.

Form or no form, Kohli was expected to play the Tests in England in June, having even represented Delhi in first-class cricket in February. But, most unexpectedly, he called it a day, leaving the team, country and game poorer without his presence and services.

Indian Test CricketretirementRohit SharmaVirat Kohli