Another day, another innings ended prematurely. Another edge to the cordon of fielders waiting behind the wickets. Virat Kohli bows his head and looks at the pitch with despair, asking it strong questions that won’t get a response. It’s too late.
He must walk back to the pavilion. The walk from the pitch to the dressing room at Lord’s is long. The outgoing batter really feels the sting of their dismissal. One has to walk about seventy metres from the pitch to the boundary in full public view, then climb the steps through the member’s pavilion adjoining the long room, where even more members are sat, and then go up two flights of stairs behind multiple seating areas. When you’re Virat Kohli, people get up just to catch a glimpse. Top-level sport is at its most brutal at such times. There is no footage to confirm this, but one can safely assume Kohli went into the dressing room and sat by himself. It is his sanctuary, that bubble.
Late that night, two loud conversations are happening outside his earshot. One is trying to understand if and when this free-fall stops. It looks at cricketers as dispensable objects, useful for only as long as they provide entertainment and desired results. And then there is another, which is sending messages of solidarity. One of those tweets, a heartwarming gesture from a young Pakistan captain, almost sounds like a hug during a period of mourning.
Are we mourning yet?
What happens to an athlete when they are woefully out of form? What is form, firstly? Is it the ability to maintain one’s biomechanics, their posture while hitting a ball, so to speak? You hear ex-cricketers talk about body position a lot. There have been evident changes in Kohli that way, but his ability to take a viewer’s breath away seems intact. Batting is tough anyway. One needs incredible coordination and technical ability to counter a red projectile coming at 90 miles per hour, and move their body fast enough to whip a 3-pound, asymmetric log of wood to connect at the right place and transfer the right amount of force. Kohli is striking the ball well.
If form is a shorthand for output, which it often is, the conversation gets tougher.
Once someone breaches the kind of statistical barriers Kohli has and lays open a plane few will ever inhabit, the barometer is only the self. Global success ratios were irrelevant for Tendulkar, Graf, or Kobe’s ilk. Virat Kohli belongs in that pantheon. Only six men have scored more international runs than him. He is within two thousand runs of eclipsing the two names above him on that list — Rahul Dravid and Jacques Kallis. If you are anywhere near them, you are amongst the greats.
Kohli will be the first to admit that the runs have dried up off late. This barren period is also eating away at his confidence. Not too long ago, there was an assuredness, an authority, on the pitch. He always had his chinks -- attacking play exists on a footing of risk -- but you felt it would need a great delivery to get him out. Not right now. Bowlers are setting the bait, and time and again, Kohli is unable to resist.
The thing is -- all dismissals are equal. Irrespective of whether you are bowled by an express yorker, or get caught heaving like you are playing golf after guzzling down a plate of Lucknow biryani, the game-state doesn’t change. The agonising part of watching Kohli right now is how often bowlers can lure him into a trap. He isn’t able to recall enough faculties to keep the dangerous balls away. Not often enough, anyway. And that, unfortunately, is making him less sure of the other parts of his game. Like an Olympic sprinter walking on a tightrope.
Is it a technical chink that nags and nags until it becomes malignant? Maybe. Roger Federer’s backhand, for all its artistry, was also an aching joint for a long time. On courts that didn’t give him enough speed off the turf, like clay, good players routinely targeted his backhand. It was a thing of beauty, that one-handed stretch, but it didn’t have enough power to trouble the best. And as Nadal, Djokovic, and his own body caught up with him, Federer didn’t have enough in his armoury to keep churning out those big titles. In seven years between February 2010 and January 2017, he won one Grand Slam.
Late in 2016, during rehabilitation after surgery, Federer spent hundreds of hours with coach Ivan Ljubicic on making his backhand an attacking option. He got his backlift higher, made the shot flatter, and used the backhand to push the opponents rather than direct the angles. The six-month break from tennis ended sometime in December. In January, he was playing the Australian Open final. Cue:
The problem plaguing this generation of cricketers, especially those good enough to play multiple formats regularly, is that there remains precious little time to return to your roots. The nets. A place where a cricketer exists only for their craft and all else is stripped away. A place where you don’t need to build yourself an imaginary cocoon. All you have is dust, mesh, and the sound of wood on leather.
A Virat, Rohit, or Bumrah don’t get to play domestic cricket or spend weeks at the nets anymore. There is too much cricket all the time. If they get a break, they use it to recuperate. Cricketers of a previous generation, or those who specialise in specific formats, had that luxury. Cheteshwar Pujara was struggling big time leading up to this summer. For all his gladiatorial qualities, he wasn’t contributing enough runs. And he was dropped. So, free of international commitments, he set off to England for a summer of domestic red-ball cricket. He didn’t so much score runs but hoarded them like he was famished. He came back to India colours a refreshed batter, almost new.
It is not a luxury Kohli will get. The fixing must happen in the public eye, against bowlers of the highest calibre who are keenly clued in on his vulnerabilities. In the last couple of years, he has shown glimpses of his genius, played some innings of quality that only his like are capable of. But they have indeed been mere glimpses. After a decade of existing at the front and centre of cricket’s consciousness, he is fading amongst the crowd. When people from all corners start citing your career stats as a crutch, is it an alarming sign?
There is a sentence about late-career Muhammed Ali that I am reluctant to recall here. I will leave it for another day. Virat Kohli is a remarkably fit athlete with a technique to die for. It would be naive to think that he is done. Not quite yet, surely?
In his pomp, Kohli was a sensory experience. With the bat, on the field, the camera couldn’t look away. He looked like a Muay Thai boxer playing a game too sedate for his taste. The version we see right now, with a resigned head, hands a little unsure, feet not moving towards the bowler in arrogance, feels like a bad impersonation. If and when the tide turns, it would be an incredible sight. The prowl, the puffed-out chest, wrists snapping so hard your ears hurt from the sound of wood hitting leather. When that Virat Kohli strides down the Lord’s pavilion, the distance to the pitch seems too short.
Maybe there is an Australian Open 2017 left in him yet. Or perhaps a full wave like the one Nadal is on right now. For intensity and steel, Kohli will relate to Nadal. One can only hope, for an object of such incredible beauty and energy shouldn’t fade away from our senses in smithereens.
I stopped watching cricket eons ego, don't know about half the references you mention here, and yet you had me hooked throughout and I could feel the words. Kudos for that. Great piece!
I kept thinking about the way he was dismissed in the last two innings. I would also ascribe some blame to something that is going between his ears. Call me a conspiracy theorist but ever since the man stood-up for Shami, things haven’t been the same. I agree that he needs a break and will not get it off the public eye, but there is something that the board is doing too.
Of course I would love to be proven wrong when he comes back all guns blazing and leaves a word or two for those who want to see his back for good. Till then tough, the wait and remaking will be painful, even for someone like me who didn’t really enjoy Kohli’s work till he said those words about Sachin. After winning the world cup.
I have started following sport more only because I read you and Prem to make sense of my feelings. Never stop writing Sarthak. Thank you for this.