Virat Kohli has been around for so long that you’d think he doesn’t have any more surprises in store. But in the last few weeks, he has revealed a new, different avatar that is as much a reflection of where he thinks he is at in his cricketing career as anything else.
It doesn’t bear elaborate repetition that Kohli is now only a one-format international – he has been so since last May, when he added Test retirement to Twenty20 International sanyas after the victorious World Cup campaign in the Americas in June 2024. He will still play 20-over cricket, for Royal Challengers Bengaluru in a couple of months’ time, but on the country vs country spectrum, it is only the 50-over format for Kohli to reiterate his greatness and his genius.
Kohli has terrific — slightly downgraded from stunning in Tests after a largely unfulfilling final few years that dragged his average down to a still impressive 46.85 — records in all three formats at the highest level, but in the one-day variant, he has been the unquestioned lord and master since his India debut in August 2008. There has hardly been an extended spell of frugal returns and low impact. Those so inclined will insist that he cracked the 50-over code very early in his career and has made the most of his early smarts. Those slightly less charitable might allude to the one-day game as being the easiest of the three widespread versions, though what’s easy for one might not necessarily be for another.
Kohli’s reputation as the ultimate master of the chase is no secret. No target, it would seem, is beyond India’s reach till the battler from Delhi is in the middle, calculating and recalibrating and planning and working out the finer details, all with effortless ease. He has pulled off the so-called impossible so many times, with that attention to the minutest of factors that have allowed him to build exponentially through the innings and then explode with practised flair towards the end, when too his famed speed between the wickets has been his steadfast ally.
There is a new avatar of Kohli now, a more free-flowing version that is at once exhilarating and educative. Exhilarating, because the 38-year-old is no longer content to just build towards a frenzy, educative because he has taken on a new challenge to rouse himself into action at this late stage of what has been a magnificent run in international cricket. Kohli has decided that the days of conservatism at the start of an innings need to be buried in the past. He has therefore been a more proactive force right from the get-go, looking to impose himself on the bowling and immediately seeking to transfer whatever pressure might have been created from the fall of the first wicket back on to the opposition.
He can do that because, well, he is Kohli. He doesn’t charge the bowling on a wing and a prayer, attempting to smack the cover off the ball because, well, that isn’t Kohli. But from risk-averse whilst bedding in, he has embraced greater enterprise, making a concerted push to call the shots at a time when the bowlers might otherwise have begun to think that they had a little edge by having dismissed one of Rohit Sharma or captain Shubman Gill.
The change of tack owes itself to perhaps more than just one reason. It’s not that Kohli doesn’t put a price on his wicket anymore, it’s just that he has voluntarily chosen to redefine his approach because he is convinced that’s what is in the best interests of the team. In an oblique sort of way, that’s a huge show of confidence in the batters to follow – Shreyas Iyer, K.L. Rahul, Axar Patel/Ravindra Jadeja, and Hardik Pandya whenever he is available and/or selected. Kohli no longer feels he has to be around to finish off the chase, or that taking early risks will set the side back so badly that it will be unable to recover. At the same time, because he is so much at home in the one-day game, because he knows his game inside out and because he is so good at sizing up conditions and the bowling so quickly, he is also aware that the damage he can do by building on the gains or otherwise of the opening salvo is unquantifiable.
In the last 10 months alone, Kohli has both finished chases and fallen to an aerial stroke with the finish line still some distance away. The former is something everyone has come to expect of the former captain; the latter will continue to come as a surprise till such time that Kohli walks out to bat because he has spoiled Indian supporters by being at the end far too often.
Let’s take the Champions Trophy in Dubai last February-March as the starting point of an admittedly limited sample size of 12 innings. In his dozen forays to the batting crease, Kohli has reeled off three hundreds and four half-centuries. The first of those centuries came, almost inevitably, against Pakistan in Dubai. Kohli walked in at 31 for one after the fifth over with India chasing 242 for victory, and duly got the job done, striking the winning four off Khushdil Shah that also took him to his 51st three-figure knock in ODIs.
A little over a week later, in the semifinal against Australia, India faced a more demanding ask – 265. Australia have been India’s bete noires in the knockout stages of ICC events too many times for the quarterfinal victory in the 2011 World Cup to stand out as consolation. This was the first knockout outing between the sides since the Aussies shattered a billion hearts into a zillion pieces in Ahmedabad in the final of the 2023 World Cup. India had overcome the Aussie challenge in the Super Eights of the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean alright, but this was a knockout game, this was payback time in the same 50-over format.
Kohli’s entry point was identical to the Pakistan game – India were 30 when Gill was dismissed off the last ball of the fifth over. The stakes can never be anything but sky-high when India face off against Pakistan, but there was a different feel to the semifinal. It was Australia, pesky, annoying and a bugbear of sorts. At stake was a place in the final. So Kohli bedded down, cautious and controlled and singularly risk-free. His 100 not out against Pakistan, off 111 deliveries, contained seven fours; 84 against Australia came off 98 deliveries with only five fours when, with India needing 40 off 44 with six wickets in hand on a tricky if not hugely demanding surface, Kohli uncharacteristically threw his hand away.
Picking leggie Adam Zampa’s googly, Kohli backed himself to deposit the ball over long-on but perhaps his over-keenness contributed to him lobbing the ball to the fielder at the boundary. Kohli was furious with himself and spent a few anxious moments on the balcony with the rest of his mates until the calm of Rahul and fire of Pandya got India home. An aberration, we told ourselves, a word that we fell back on when, in the first of three ODIs against South Africa in Ranchi in November, he smacked two sixes inside the first 10 overs.
Little did we know then that this was the revamped Kohli that had decided to reveal itself. Ranchi was treated to seven sixes as Kohli hammered 135 off 120 deliveries. Not in a chase, but while batting first. Kohli isn’t a reluctant six-hitter, but he isn’t in the Rohit league – who is, actually? In his first 293 ODI innings, Kohli had 152 sixes – on an average, 0.52 sixes per knock. The last four, against South Africa and now New Zealand, have already yielded 13.
“I back myself to counterattack now rather than just trying to play the situation in because some ball has your name on it,” he rationalised after his 91-ball 93 in Vadodara on Sunday when, again to everyone’s surprise, he was out playing in the air with victory still 67 away and one of the batters to follow (Washington Sundar) a doubtful starter. “So, there’s no point waiting around for too long. But at the same time, you don’t play outrageous shots. You still stick to your strengths, but you back yourself enough to put the opposition on the back foot.”
And that’s where the genesis of the slightly rejigged iteration lies – the desire to dominate, to wean away any potential pressure that comes with the loss of a wicket, to stamp his authority from the off even if it means there is a little more danger of being dismissed early in the piece compared to the past. In so many ways, it is an acknowledgement from the man himself that he doesn’t feel the need to bear the cross all the time because there is enough depth and experience and quality and mettle in the others to follow. That’s not to say that Kohli is shirking responsibility or has suddenly chosen to go all rogue and gung-ho. It’s another step in the journey of evolution, a process that Kohli is still committed to despite 557 appearances and more than 28,000 runs at the highest level.
Kohli embarking on this adventure, for that’s what it truly is, is a testament to his zest to keep pushing himself and a humbling reminder to the mere mortals that the road to progress should not ever come to a dead end. He could so easily have coasted in the wake of his well-founded reputation and continued to be the celebrated chasemeister that instils such dread in all comers, and no one would have even blinked. But after so many bites at the cherry, Kohli still isn’t content merely coasting. Then again, that’s what we should have expected of a phenomenon to whom setting benchmarks and standing out as the example to emulate are second nature.
