O Captain! My Captain! Pradeep Magazine on Virat Kohli

All that has a beginning comes to an end, be it life or a sportsperson’s career. In between these two poles lies an unpredictable journey of success and failure, happiness and despair, wins and losses and the very struggle that life itself is. In the world of sports, retirement, whether forced or done willingly, is that final blow where it all ends.

It all ends for Virat Kohli in Test cricket. In what many believe to be a premature decision, Kohli no longer thinks he has the energy, the mental strength and the skill sets to succeed in the arduous world of Test cricket, especially in conditions as challenging as they are in England. Even the lure of 10,000 Test runs, a milestone he was very close to, was not temptation enough to travel to England and let his unsettling, combustible energies explode on the cricket field.

He is 36, father of two children and has a life partner in film star Anushka, who has contributed immensely to his growth as a person. In the ledger of life, it is an age where the whole world lies ahead and not behind you. But, in a sportsperson’s life, it is an age where the end is in sight. The mind may be willing, the body is not. In Kohli’s case, the reverse may be true. Form may have deserted him in Test cricket, but his fitness levels can put even a teenager to shame. His white ball success and IPL form do his reputation no harm and yet he believes he has to walk away from a format he cherishes the most, which he has nurtured with “blood, sweat and tears”. A format that he “loves” and has “shaped” him as a person.

Conventional wisdom would say that you keep with you what you love the most and give up what is frivolous and lacks substance and meaning. Why not give up white ball format and not Test cricket? Ah! There lies the rub. For all its popularity and following, the shorter format is easier to deal with, both mentally and physically. Its younger sibling, the T20, is perhaps a fun endeavour where failure does not hurt much, nor does success make you feel you have climbed the summit. And the millions you make in IPL is an added incentive to not give it up. It is a commitment to a business venture, not to a nation, where failure does not amount to a “betrayal”.

Virat, the epitome of commitment, discipline and concentration, despite all the distractions he creates for his rivals through his physical gestures, can still devour rivals in the shorter version of the game. He can out-bat them, outrun them and psyche them into submission. He can’t do it anymore in the most demanding format of them all. He does not have in him the energy and the strength to deal with the technical shortcomings that have crept into his game, and sustain his volcanic energy levels for a full five days.

Virat is the supreme manifestation of what valour means in the truest sense of the word. He is a fearless warrior who charges himself with superhuman energy, to needle his opponents. It must be rare in the cricket history of the world and unheard of in India that aggression, even an ugly expression of it, can be combined with Zen-like concentration to produce sublime performances. His captaincy record is outstanding for this very reason where he energised the team in the field with electric currents that made him the poster boy of Test cricket.

By his own admission, this act drained him. As time went by, he did not like some aspects of himself and yet he had become a prisoner of his own image. He had to “perform” even if he did not want to. Combined with his sliding success rate as a batsman, he faced “depression” and was desperate to seek an escape route.

He wants to confront his inner demons and “rinse” his mind. He is a man ever willing to change, introspect and his turn towards spirituality would suggest he is seeking “inner peace”.

His international journey had begun as a cherubic young boy who cared a damn about what the world thought about him and led India to an under-19 World Cup win. Discipline and hard training were the casualties of a desire to savour the goodies the world had to offer. He realised well in time that his cricket was suffering and he needed to change. His transformation was dramatic. Harsh discipline and diet changes were introduced to chisel the Virat Kohli the world came to know and admire.

A decade and a half later, Virat has achieved what all sportspersons dream of but very few attain — the status of a legend, Test cricket’s mascot, a batting genius and a captain par excellence. To play or not to play, that must have been the question troubling the mind and giving him restless nights. Virat, who thrived on challenges and loved the good fight, finally convinced himself it was time to give up and move on. There is more to life than “mere” cricket.

— The writer is the author of ‘Not Quite Cricket’ and ‘Not Just Cricket’

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