Virat Kohli
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Profile
Dec 28 2014
CAPTAIN COOLER
AVIJIT GHOSH
His batting and captaincy are on fire, yet he is chilled enough to blow his girlfriend a kiss from the pitch and spell his fashion label Wrogn. Both on the field and off, Virat Kohli's got game, and that's why he scores It first happened in 1960, before a packed Brabourne Stadium in Bombay. Abbas Ali Baig had just reached a Test half-century against Australia when an audacious Ms Bhatt ran to the pitch and rewarded the dapper batsman with a kiss before gasping spectators. Since that cheeky act, cricketers in India have often been objects of PDA. But last month, when the Kiss of Love protests rocked the nation, Virat Kohli added a new dimension to this rolling playbook of love. The Delhi batsman sent a flying kiss off his bat to actor-girlfriend Anushka Sharma sitting in the VIP gallery during an ODI match against Sri Lanka at Hyderabad. No Indian cricketer had so openly demonstrated his ardour before though Pataudi, Ravi Shastri and Mohammad Azharuddin all had famous girlfriends. But the 26-year-old cricketer wasn't just breaking norms; in the same innings, he reached 6,000 runs in just 136 ODI innings, a new world record.
The gesture underlined two traits. One, a willing ness to change and evolve.
Not long ago, the Delhi batter could only express elation with crude references to mothers and sisters. Second, he seemed to be a firm believer in what Frank Sinatra sang an era ago, “I did it my way.“
In a sense, Kohli encapsulates the best and brightest of a generation bred in post-liberalization India: tattooed and teeming with attitude but setting and achieving the highest of benchmarks.
On the last day of the Adelaide Test, when Australia set India a target of 363, that's exactly what was on display. Most captains would have plumped for a draw.But Kohli, a stand-in skipper, aimed for Mission Impossible. Revelling under pressure, he led the way with an assault that had India agog. His career-best 141 took his cumulative runs in the match to 256, eclipsing the previous highest by a Test captain on debut: Kiwi Graham Dowling's 244 against India in 1967-68. The Delhi batter had smashed 115 in the first innings after being struck on the helmet by paceman Mitchell Johnson. India lost. But as the dominant tweeple sentiment suggested, it was more satisfying than a draw. “A draw was never an option,“ he said later.
It was widely believed that Kohli was born to lead, and Adelaide showed his time has come. 2015 could well witness the end of the Dhoni regime and mark the beginning of the Kohli era.
On Twitter, he is already India's sportsman No 1. With 4.92 million followers, he has crossed Sachin's 4.88. Kohli seems to have a natural aptitude for social media, often mixing business with pleasure: wishing happy birthday to friend and brother Gabbar (Shikhar Dhawan), plugging RCB boss Sid Mallya's asinine video or promoting Wrogn, his breakaway youth fashion brand irreverently spelt wrongly . His Facebook page has a staggering 19.1 million likes.
Which is why in its annual list for 2014, London-based magazine SportsPro called Kohli the second most marketable sportsperson in the world.
He is already enjoying the perks of being a star player and his ads often trade on his bad boy cool quotient. He is the rakish Lothario with love marks on his neck (Fastrack), the dude asking for a girl's phone number (Celkon mobile) or just the guy who eyes the girl at the gym (Axe).
For Kohli, the reel and real have almost coalesced. Two English women cricketers have been hitting on him via Twitter and in 2012, in Hobart, Tasmania, a female fan put up a poster saying, “Offer still stands Kohli, my place tonight.“ He confessed later on TV , `'I didn't take up the offer“.
Since his international debut in 2008, what has separated Kohli from the rest is his ability to win matches almost singlehandedly in ODIs and T20s. His approach is goal-oriented. For him, batting is about getting your country beyond the line, preferably without any last-over heroics. He is yet to master the moving ball but his wristwork, arguably the finest in India since VVS, has been key to his 13 tons in winning chases; second only to Tendulkar's 14. That he has excelled in all three formats underlines his ability to adapt.Over the years, almost everyone in world cricket has endorsed him. But the finest validation came from Sir Vivian Richards, who said, “I love his aggression and se rious passion. He re minds me of myself.“
At 17, Kohli came out to bat in a Ranji game against Karna taka the day after his father passed away . He took his team to safety with a 90 before attend ing the funeral. He has said, “If you are dedicated to something, nothing should distract you. Whenever I get stuck in a bad situation, I still think of that day, my most difficult moment, to get out of it.“
Virat Kohli has been rightly ordained as the future of Indian cricket. And the future is now.
