In his ascent from a promising young player to the face of Indian cricket, Virat Kohli has succeeded legend after legend. He replaced Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar for his debut, and MS Dhoni was his captain after him.
He hasn’t been comparable since then.
In 2011, Virat Kohli made his ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup debut at the age of 22, making him the second youngest player on India’s World Cup-winning team. However, due to his popularity before the competition, he had previously played in 45 ODIs.
While Virat Kohli dismissal for just 12 against Sri Lanka in his India debut did not portend what was to come, it did not take him long to start having an impact as he reached his first half-century in his fourth game.
The Delhi native had to be patient and wait for the absence of some Indian greats before securing a spot in the side, but a first hundred came more than a year later. During a tri-nation ODI competition at the beginning of 2010, Kohli replaced a rested Tendulkar, and he took advantage of the situation by scoring another century.
Virat Kohli was a bit of a mystery off the field, but according to his captain at the time, Dhoni, the team liked Kohli just the way he was.
“It’s important for him to be himself,” he remarked. He has developed now, and you have to display who you are.
He appears to be a humble man to us. He might appear differently to the rest of the world.
Being a decent person is vital, but it can wait. Right now, what matters is that Virat Kohli makes a goal on the pitch.
With an average of 47.38 runs per game, Kohli finished the year as India’s top ODI run scorer, earning a position in the home World Cup team for 2011.
He set the tone for the tournament with a century in the first match before rebuilding with Gambhir in the championship match when Sehwag and Tendulkar left early, scoring 35 to lead India to a historic victory. From there, a Test debut followed, and Virat Kohli started to set records during a brief term as ODI captain in 2013—during which he scored a century in just his second game as captain.
He scored three figures off just 52 balls against Australia to record the quickest ODI century by an Indian and fastest against the Australians. In 2014, when filling in for Dhoni, he scored his first century as Test captain against Australia before taking up the captaincy full-time halfway through the series.
The weight of the nation falls on you as a captain, and when the nation consists of hundreds of millions of people, the weight may be too much to carry. However, it served as the catalyst for some of Virat Kohli best years in his career.
He broke Don Bradman and Rahul Dravid‘s previous record of four straight Test series double centuries in 2016 and 2017. With Kohli, no one could keep up. In 2017 and 2018, he received the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy as the ICC Men’s Cricketer of the Year.
In 2018, he added to his collection of trophies by winning the ICC Men’s Test and ODI Player of the Year awards and being named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. In this period, Kohli became the quickest player to 10,000 ODI runs, needing 54 fewer innings than Tendulkar to accomplish the feat.
He subsequently resigned from his captaincy of the T20 team, the ODI team, and the Test team due to a decline in form. But as he hit his first hundred in 1020 days in 2022, smashing 122 runs from 61 deliveries against Afghanistan in the Asia Cup for his first T20I century, the adage that “form is temporary and class is permanent” proved to be accurate. The King had returned, and in place of the fired-up boy from his early years, a proud parent figure had taken his place.
The past 2.5 years have taught me a lot, he remarked.
“Those enraged celebrations are no longer happening.
“I’ve received a lot of advise and suggestions; people told me I was doing this and that incorrectly.
“I picked out all the videos from the best time I had, same initial movement, same approach towards the ball, and it was just what was happening inside my head, I wasn’t able to explain it to anyone.”
Since then, Virat Kohli has played 500 times for India, and when the tournament that made him and the rest of the 2011 team famous comes to India’s borders, his career is nearly complete.
The only successful member of India’s team this time around is Kohli, who graduated from that class 12 years ago. He and India will both be hoping he finishes the 2023 edition with the trophy once more in order to complete the circle.
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