Dominant, passionate, and selfless but not brash, egoistic, and selfish, this is the proper definition for former India captain and the biggest superstar of world cricket who was on a different level in the last decade. The name Virat Kohli invokes passion and excitement and the entire world watches when number 18 marches down from the dressing room to the playing field. The game of cricket has been a witness of players such as Viv Richards, Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, and other legends who changed the way cricket is played, but seldom have we come across a player like Virat who changed how a player approaches a game, approaches match fitness and approaches physical fitness.
Heir to the great Sachin Tendulkar, when Virat first burst onto the international arena, he was just a plumpy kid who had come fresh out of his U-19 World Cup exploits. Not very easy on the eyes and certainly not very gifted, but how Virat managed to change all of this within a few years will certainly be looked up to by many generations of cricketers to come. The former India captain over the years has batted in various spots but he managed to conquer the world and deliver his best services for the nation when batting at number 3. Kohli who rubbed shoulders with the greats of Indian cricket such as Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, and Virender Sehwag batted initially batted at number 4, and with passing time, he kept on showing signs of brilliance.
The world stood up and applauded the brilliance of Virat Kohli when he took on the dangerous Lasith Malinga and slammed him for 24 runs in an over which left the Sri Lankan talisman bamboozled and clueless. Kohli smashed 133* off 86 deliveries with 16 boundaries and 2 sixes to his name. Apart from everything that Kohli did, the knock which he played in the 2011 World Cup final to steady India’s ship in a pressure situation will be spoken about once he is done with his playing days.
The ambassador of Test cricket and the chief architect of reviving Test cricket, when Virat took over the Test captaincy from MS Dhoni, India was ranked number 7. It is Kohli’s brilliance and his passion for the game that rubbed off on his team which gave birth to a bullish Indian team led by a fierce pace battery that dominated world cricket for consecutive five years. Come 2016, Virat was a different beast altogether as he kept on churning out centuries for fun. The memories of Virat winning the quarter-finals against West Indies off his own bat is something that cricket fans will savor for generations to come.
After the pandemic struck, Virat slowly drifted away from his best, his last hundred in any format of the game came way back in 2019, and right now, the rough patch doesn’t seem to end for the chase-master. But the rough patch doesn’t deny Kohli his class and all the matches that he has won for the country. Be it in any given circumstance, any given era, or any given opposition, 70 international centuries matter, they matter because Kohli is the 3rd on the list and is only behind Sachin with 100 centuries and Ricky Ponting with 71 centuries.
The treatment that he is being given by the former legends of the game is completely unfair and unjust. Certainly, Kohli is not going anywhere and so aren’t these criticism, as they are just imaginative smoke without an existing fire.
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