Virat Kohli: The boy-man who is now a poised captain

Having spent about half my life in New Delhi, I automatically slotted Virat Kohli into a ‘type’ when he started playing regularly with the Indian team.

A well looked-after stubble. Toned muscles. Round-necked Ed Hardy-type T-shirts. Shades. Aggressive and abusive. Brash, certainly. I imagined that he would speak with a cool accent and drive around in an SUV (while he saves up money to buy a Hummer) with his friends. A West Delhi boy, I thought. (I was categorising, not judging.)

Kohli’s often-vile sledging or the bird he flipped at the Sydney crowd back in January 2012 reinforced that notion.

Yes, he was a tremendous batsman alright, but he was crossing the line far too often. Aggression is good, necessary even, in a professional sportsperson. Uncouth behaviour is not. In any case, whether it worked for him or not, and whether I was in a minority or majority in disliking that sort of conduct or not, it doesn’t go down well with the fuzz. And that matters.

This was when he had started playing for the Indian team. I had met him once before that. India had just won the Under-19 World Cup under Kohli’s captaincy in 2008 and Chetan Chauhan, major domo at the Delhi and Districts Cricket Association, offered to bring him across for a chat to the television news channel I was working with at the time.

The two of them sat across the table from me in the studio and, well, Chauhan and I had to do all the talking because Kohli just wasn’t up for it. I don’t think he was tongue-tied or shy. He just didn’t say much. [The smile was back on after the chat – it was, as Kohli told us immediately after, his first time in a TV studio and he wasn’t sure what he should say and not.] He came across as bright and spunky, you know, in that particular West Delhi way.

When did the metamorphosis begin? The change to the thoughtful, un-self-centred, calm (mostly) and collected captain, whose interactions with the press – the relationship was choppy till recently – have now become such an event to look forward to? Or was he always like that and I hadn’t noticed? No, that’s not possible. He was a bit of a roughneck. Now, he seems to be much more sensible. Is it just the captaincy?

This new side to Kohli opened up for me, I think, during a press conference on April 10 this year, ahead of the IPL 2015 match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore.

The 50-over World Cup had just gotten over and the atmosphere was tense. To start with, Kohli hadn’t scored too many runs after a century against Pakistan in the first game. And, of course, TV channels started airing shows with hints that the presence of Anushka Sharma, Kohli’s partner, was the reason for his poor run. Kohli was then involved in a very unsavoury incident with an Indian journalist as well, in which he was to blame for misreading an article and for picking the wrong man to vent his ire on. By the time the IPL started, it was almost as if there was a complete breakdown of the relationship between the press and India’s Test captain– not an ideal situation for either party.

Out came Kohli for the press meet, answered every cricketing question asked of him, and, once the meeting was over, said – not aggressively but in an utterly matter-of-fact way, “The way people have reacted towards my personal life, Anushka in particular, was really disrespectful. I wanted to put that out there in public because, at a human level, I was really hurt.”

That was when I noticed that Kohli had grown up.

I thought he placed it perfectly between point and cover that time and timed it so well that the fielder chased it all the way to the boundary before giving up. At 26, he had handled a rather tricky situation with great maturity. His public image was important, as was his personal life, and the message was clear-eyed. It was impressive.

Four-odd months on, in Sri Lanka, he appeared to have grown up some more, give or take a needless – and stupid, considering the possibility of injury – kick at the ball after catching it (leopards and spots come to mind).

For starters, at no stage did Kohli bother with issuing the expected laudatory words for MS Dhoni, his predecessor as India Test captain, after winning the series. From tom-tomming the five-bowler plan (in collusion with Ravi Shastri) to saying, “We maintain that drawing a Test match or thinking of those sort of things has to be the last option for our group of guys right now”, Kohli, very early in his career as captain, has – officially – distanced himself from the Dhoni Way. He seems more in the Sourav Ganguly mould, now that I think of it. It’s early days yet, but he appears to be his own man, and he knows what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. And he isn’t shy about making his thoughts public, having a discussion with press people, thrashing ideas about. Ideas that, along with having the Kohli imprint, have a lot of Shastri about them.

He is conscious of how he should go about things, the responsibility he now shoulders as a young captain of a young team – his conduct during the extended Sangakkara farewell, again, was exemplary. I particularly liked that he didn’t go overboard with heaping praise on the retiring Sri Lankan great: “We have always looked at Sanga as a great player of the game but we haven’t really spent time with him as a team. […] We obviously understand the enormity of the situation and give him the respect he duly deserves.” Measured – not a word I ever thought I’d use of Kohli outside of him as a batsman. Confident he always was, of course.

It has to do with personnel, most certainly, and India won’t always come up against a below-par very-in-transition Sri Lanka. Not always will Ishant Sharma and R Ashwin run through sides and not very often will innings totals of 393 and 325 for 8 declared and 312 and 274 result in wins. Starting with the South Africa series – though it’s at home – things will start getting tougher, Kohli’s patience and equilibrium will be tested, the temptation to include an extra batsman will appear oftener and oftener and, well, the draw might occasionally move up the list of options from time to time.

But, for now, I like what I see of Kohli the captain, the man about town, the leader of men. A batsman of rare class. At any rate, his transition from boy-man to a poised captain is an impressive enough story in itself.
Shamya Dasgupta is Senior Editor at Wisden India. He tweets @shamyad.