Battling internal demons, Virat Kohli confronts the most demanding challenge of his cricketing journey – Firstcricket News, Firstpost

Sachin Tendulkar’s 99th international hundred came on 12 March 2011, in a World Cup league game against South Africa in Nagpur. It took the little man from Mumbai a further 368 days before he kept his tryst with the unprecedented milestone of 100 international tons. Not until 16 March 16 2012 did the hundred count tick over to three digits, when he made 114 against Bangladesh in a 50-over contest in Mirpur.

Between those two three-figure knocks, Tendulkar batted 33 times in international cricket – he had just two half-centuries in 12 One-Day Internationals and touched fifty six times in 21 Test innings, twice being dismissed in the 90s. Every time he strode out to take guard between No. 99 and No. 100, there was a buzz of anticipation, a frenzied wait, a collective push willing him towards where no man had gone previously.

By November of 2019, the populist if somewhat befuddling view was that it was a matter of when, rather than whether, Virat Kohli would overhaul Tendulkar’s magical 100 hundreds. The hype stemmed from the fact that Kohli had breezed to 70 centuries across formats at the highest level. It seemed lost on several that, despite his heroics, he was just a little more than two-thirds of the way to Tendulkar. The convenient narrative was to build edifices of heroic optimism around the then India captain though, to be fair, Kohli steered steadfastly clear of being drawn into this cesspool.

Virat Kohli’s last century at any level came in 2019. Image: Sportzpics

Two and a half years later, Kohli is stuck on 70. In the period between November 2019, when he produced a magical 136 in India’s first home day-night Test, against Bangladesh in Kolkata, and now, three-figures have been singularly elusive. Kohli has gone out to bat for India 75 times since that 136; he has topped fifty on 24 occasions, but seldom zeroed in on a hundred. Indeed, in the last year, he has touched 80 just once in 34 hits. Talk of 100 has gone out the window, there is no more than a tenuous reference, at best, to No. 71.

What’s wrong with Kohli?

It’s a question that has reverberated around the Indian cricketing firmament for a while now. Where is the dominant, all-conquering batsman who towered over all-comers for nearly five full years between 2015 and 2019? Where is the imperious stroke-maker, the consummate finisher, the destroyer of high-quality attacks? Where is Virat Kohli, as we knew him in all his pomp and glory?

If there was one answer to these questions, Kohli would have figured it out by himself long back. Life, however, doesn’t come in black and white. It’s the grey areas that lend colour – pardon the terrible pun – and add mystery, mystique, drama and intrigue. It’s precisely this vast expanse of grey that Kohli must successfully traverse as he seeks to haul his illustrious career back on track.

What the last year has done is open our eyes to the wondrousness of Kohli’s behemoth-like presence at the highest level for those five years. To bat like he did for so long against so many with such great success was particularly special, though it might not have seemed so at the time because Kohli made it appear ridiculously simple and commonplace.

There has been a touch of the human and the fragile to Kohli in the last year that speaks to the vicissitudes of form, the vagaries of fortune, the fickleness of fame. That it has coincided with a particularly tumultuous phase in his cricketing life has added an intriguing subtext. Undisputed captain across formats and inarguably the best batsman in the team, if not the world, a little over six months back, Kohli is now no longer the general but an honest foot-soldier. And as much as opponents covet his scalp, he perhaps doesn’t inspire the same awe and fear in them as he did not so long back.

Which is understandable. Cricket’s a game of failures, like most sport is. One’s more likely to fail than succeed; the trick, as Mahendra Singh Dhoni so succinctly has put it so many times, is to extend the gap between the failures. Kohli seemed to mock the failure theory, stacking up runs for fun innings after innings, night after day, day after night, until he no longer did. In a coming of the full circle, he must now be wondering, like his vast legion of loyal fans, where his next big knock is going to come from.

Come it will, for sure. Kohli hasn’t gone from a batting prince to a commoner irrevocably or irreversibly. He has too much quality not to be able to arrest the slide – for that’s what this is, let’s make no mistake – and rediscover run-scoring ways, though only time will tell if he will ever be the dominant, omnipotent force he once used to be.

So, what does the road back entail?

That’s no secret – bloody-minded commitment to the cause, long, untiring stints at the nets, smartness, industry, ambition, hunger and desire. Wait, aren’t these quintessential Kohli traits in any case? Aren’t these what have characterised his cricket all these years? The answer lies in the questions themselves. If they have worked for him in the past, there is no reason why they shouldn’t work again, notwithstanding the fact that he is 33, that is a few months shy of completing 14 years in international cricket.

Two former international captains, among them Ravi Shastri, his close confidant and until November the head coach of the national team, have advocated a clean break from the sport so that Kohli regathers focus, recharges batteries and rediscovers the brilliant batsman lurking within himself. It’s unlikely Kohli wouldn’t have reflected on the same because for all the extraneous scrutiny, the fiercely proud Kohli is his most unforgiving critic. If he needs to subjugate his batting ego — for want of a better phrase — to return to prolific run-making, then so be it, as he showed in the first innings of the Cape Town Test at the start of the year.

Kohli’s trust in the processes has been immense, as has been his unflagging faith in his abilities. Never before have that trust and faith been challenged so severely. How will he respond to this, the biggest challenge of his cricketing life yet?

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