The Run Machine

Over the last couple of years it has been absolute joy to have been able to watch the continued evolution of a player. He has raised his game beyond where it was, even if you think it was no longer possible. He has vanquished his demons, he has slayed the opposition bowlers and in many ways is the perfect champion to bid 2020 a Goodbye with. The champion on “Champion’s Folklore” today is none other than Virat Kohli. Dare I say, there is no greater a champion in modern cricket as compared to Virat Kohli. 

 It was about 13 or 14 years back, in only his second first class game against Karnataka he had scored a 90, in a match in which he lost his father that was probably the display of enormous courage bubbling inside a young and chubby Virat Kohli. By 2008 Virat Kohli was in Malaysia captaining the India Under 19 side, you could see a fiery personality coming through who wanted to be at the middle of it all. It was also in those early years in 2008 with the Royal Challengers that you knew you’re witnessing a rise of someone very special, he might have been work in progress but in 2008 he was already playing for India, such was the greatness of that teen Kohli. 

 Then comes 2011 World Cup and Virat Kohli starts with a bang a 100 against Bangladesh. By the end of the world cup, he was batting at no 4 but you already knew that this fellow liked big situations and always had the right words for it. Remember? Carrying Tendulkar on his shoulders and saying “Tendulkar has carried us for 22 years, it’s time we carried him a little bit as well.” In the white ball game Virat Kohli is just peerless, and his defining moment came a bit after the 2011 world cup, in Australia in a game against Sri Lanka at Hobart. 320 runs, 40 overs to get and Virat Kohli gets a 133 off 86 balls and guides India home. For a young man to look that chase in the eye against the likes of Lasith Malinga, Nuwan Kulasekara, it was those early indications that Virat Kohli was going to be a chase master in the near future. A few months later came an innings that had everyone on the edge of their seats, against Pakistan in the 2012 Asia Cup, Virat Kohli smoked a swashbuckling 183 and yet again guided India to a victory, a victory for the ages to come. 

 It wasn’t until 2011 though that Virat Kohli, made his way to the test side. Even though he had been around since 2008 it shows you that even the very greatest can take a little time to make their way into the highest format of the game. A poor run of form in the West Indies meant he was dropped from the England tour, but he made his way back to the side in the 2011-12 Australia series but the woes continued. It wasn’t until the Perth game that we saw Virat Kohli the test batsman, a 70 odd in difficult conditions followed by a century at Adelaide were just the beginning of the many more to come. For the next two or three years Virat Kohli was pretty impressive. Then came a turning point, not all turning points come from your successes and as Kohli himself acknowledges, “The 2014 England series probably taught me the most in my whole career.” His biggest change arose from his biggest failure, scoring a meagre 134 runs from 10 innings in England, he had no clue what so ever, it was as if Virat Kohli was coming in and there again he was walking out. Four months later Virat Kohli was in Australia playing a series that defined his red ball career that 141 in the second innings at Adelaide was my word a hundred that had people all over the globe on the edge of their seats. He scored 4 centuries in that series, scoring a mammoth 692 runs in 8 innings. And wow what a red ball player has he been ever since. Post India’s tour of England in 2014 Virat Kohli averages 62 in test match cricket. It was around 2016 that Virat Kohli started getting those daddy hundreds so much so that he scored 4 consecutive double hundreds in 4 series. Here you look at his career stats now and it would boggle your mind, at present he has as many as 7 double hundreds in red ball cricket. Then came the triumvirate of great innings in 2018, one at Centurion, one at Edgbaston and one in Perth. If you play one of those in a year you can look back and say you know what tough conditions feel like and he got all three of those and each one of those was a joy to behold. 

 In 2018 he re wrote the rules of white ball cricket, he made as many as 1200 runs in 14 ODI innings at an average of a 133 and a strike rate of 102, he was just sublime. Virat Kohli had scored runs with a toothbrush that year. Now then how can you forget the enormous feats he has achieved even in the T20 format be it in International matches or at the IPL. The innings of 80 odd runs in Mohali against Australia in a virtual quarterfinal, was something else. And how can you look past the 2016 IPL where he made history, he hadn’t scored a single T20 hundred before this, then comes IPL 2016 and he ends up getting 4, not only that, he scored as many as 937 runs in that season, ahh that was a season that he owned. 

 One more quality that we’re seeing in Virat Kohli, this is his team now, he is gathering people around him, he is raising their game and in doing so, the way he addresses his people you can say that he is now the unquestionable leader, he’s almost protecting the people around him as he takes them to battle. 

 He has already been named the “ Men’s Cricketer of the Decade” by ICC and at the time of writing this blog he has 27 test hundreds to go with 43 in ODIs, thus Virat Kohli stands the tallest amongst the many modern greats who play the game. He’s at a stage where he can play for posterity, and I think we can see that, the Virat Kohli we knew, the wildly passionate, the person who took on others, never short of a verbal joust, suddenly we’re seeing a calmer Virat Kohli, a more Statesman like Virat Kohli. We’re seeing a Virat Kohli who is still a very powerful opponent he’s someone who’ll look you in the eye but there’s a gentler side to Virat Kohli that’s coming through. Dare I say Virat Kohli will be remembered in history not only as the player that he is but also as the person he will be. So here’s Virat Kohli, a peerless ODI batman an outstanding T20I batsman and yet someone whose heart says he wants to protect Test Match cricket and ensure that Test match cricket has far greater longevity than some people think. What a Champion!