The rise and rise of Kohli

Youngster has backed showmanship with stirring performances

Iron-jawed champions like Roger Federer and Michael Schumacher inspire awe, but not adulation. While their domination of their respective fields can stir emotions, sport needs characters now more than ever before.

Virat Kohli might just have arrived in the nick of time. During the Champions League and in the recent five-match one-day series against England, there was no more animated person in the Royal Challengers Bangalore and India dressing rooms than the 22-year-old Delhiite.

Every run by his team-mate was celebrated with uninhibited passion, every dismissal of an opposition batsman was a chance for him to prance around the field and lock the bowler in a bear hug. Off the field, Kohli is a casually dressed young lad, who loves life to the fullest – from gadgets to cars.

But showmanship hasn’t come at the cost of his personal performance. Kohli has a remarkably mature brain that allows him to draw a line between personal and prof­e­ssional lives, making him a success as a cricketer.

The brazenness began to gel with performance consistently in 2010, a year of transformation, and for the first time somebody, Ray Jennings to be precise, spoke about him as captaincy material. It could have easily been taken for a coach’s appreciation for his pet player had Kohli not scored 995 runs at 47.38 from 25 ODIs with three hundreds in that calendar year.

The trouble with such a watershed year is that it places heavy expectations on a player. But Kohli responded marvelously in 2011, underlining the fact that the previous year was not a flash in the pan. This year, he has already scored 1138 runs from 29 one-dayers at 45.52 with three hundreds and has five more one-dayers against the West Indies remaining.

His latest round of exploits came against England in the five-match one-day series.

Kohli’s 270 runs at 90.00 played a massive role in India winning 5-0, making Alastair Cook, the England skipper, groan at the sight of Kohli walking in. Cook tried gamely to prevent him scoring through his favoured off-side, employing four fielders inside the circle in the fourth one-dayer in Mumbai. Kohli still found gaps to send the ball to the ropes, ridiculing the field placement.

The series also saw Mahendra Singh Dhoni resorting to Kohli’s part-time medium-pace, delivered with an action similar to that of former New Zealand all-rounder Chris Harris, and he seldom disappointed his skipper, producing accurate short spells to keep the Englishmen silent. Now, he wants more bowling, think-tank permitting.

“I get disappointed when I bowl because, people think my action is so funny and I am just having a walk in the park. I’ve always told them to give me the ball as I am not going to give more than eight runs an over in T20. I’ve that feeling that, batsmen can’t hit me. I take bowling pretty seriously, and I want to improve my bowling so that I can help in ODIs, and maybe in Tests too when bowlers are tired,” Kohli said.

It’s that willingness to work on his skills and explore new areas for the benefit of the team has helped him become a dependable name in the middle-order in such a short time. Now, the challenge for him is to translate his success in the limited-overs format to Test cricket. Kohli had a modest beginning in the West Indies, making just 76 runs from three Tests at 15.20.

Dhoni acknowledged the challenge ahead. “In Test cricket, patience is the key. Tests are played with red balls that swing much more than the white ones and for a longer duration. He will now go through a transition phase, and if you don’t play, you will never learn,” Dhoni said.

Kohli has already shown that studiousness and flashiness can co-exist and produce enviable results. Now it might be the time for us to see him conquering the Test peak.