Reputations: Virat and Rohit

A two-parter on a couple of innings by the Big Two. Part One is Virat, because, well, Virat's always first...

There have been some excellent pieces of writing on the retirement of Virat and Rohit, none better than those by Jarrod Kimber, on Rohit’s genius at making runs when no-one else could, and then on Kohli, the one man event horizon whose gravitational pull became so strong that all of India fell towards him.

I saw two innings, one from each, that seemed to encapsulate much of what made them what they were. The first of those came from Virat, at Edgbaston in 2018. It’s an extract from my book Bat, Ball & Field. The second, from Rohit at Lord’s in 2021, follows next week. Buckle up…

                                                                       *** 

Gary Barwell stood on one edge of the square at Edgbaston. It was a bright, cold day in October. The season was over at last. For the groundsman, winters were very different to summers. In summer, the cricket was relentless, and so was the tension, not just because of the commercial and sporting pressure to prepare wickets that provided months full of exciting cricket, but because of the pressure he put on himself. Like most groundsmen, Gary took everything personally. This earth had his heart and soul in it. In his office underneath one of the stands, he had a wall chart with a section for each of the pitches he’d prepared, filled with his notes on the Clegg Hammer reading and soil moisture content, the scores in the game, the grade awarded to the pitch by the match referee, and any personal reflections he had. In the seven years he’d been at Edgbaston, he knew everything about every pitch he’d made, even at the second team grounds and the outdoor nets.

He could fit twenty-four pitches across the square, which stretched out beyond him to the far side of the ground like a pleasure beach. He took a breath and said: “I was privileged to produce a pitch that Virat Kohli scored 149 on. When you see all the Tweets and people talking about the wicket, it’s a joy to come to work.”

The game had begun like every other Test, with Gary feeling physically sick as the first overs were bowled. His shoulders were knotted. England were batting, day one of the first Test against India. Birmingham was a stronghold for the India fans, and so the crowd was more split than usual. What he was striving for in a summer of relentless heatwaves was a pitch that would offer a chance to bowlers and batsmen if they played well enough, a head-of-the-pin balance that would enable neither to fully get on top but instead for them to fight for dominance, to gain slim advantage and hold it for as long as they could.

But as the first ball went down, no-one, not even Gary Barwell, knew exactly what would happen.

Virat Kohli was 30 years old. He’d been voted ‘Leading Cricketer In the World’ by Wisden Almanack for two years in a row. He had been named as the captain of the ICC’s annual, notional, Test and one-day teams of the year. He was ranked as the number one batsman in 50-over cricket and the number two in Test cricket. He had been awarded player of the tournament at consecutive T20 World Cups. He was captain of India in all formats, and beyond that he was their most famous, richest and best-loved batsman, the successor to Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar in a land where cricket, and more specifically batting, was worshipped.

He had just got married to Anushka Sharma, a Bollywood actress, in a union that compounded their celebrity, doubled it, cubed it. Kohli had thirty million followers on Twitter and another forty million on Instagram. His kind of fame came at a price, and Kohli coped by compartmentalising his day, his waking hours allocated rigidly and ruthlessly in order to preserve his training time and playing commitments. He conceded only to superstition. As a young player he’d used the same pair of gloves for each innings, but that was impossible now so he moved on to various bracelets and bangles and bits of black thread tied around his wrists and in his pockets. He had a ‘God’s Eye’ tattoo on his left shoulder, a samurai warrior on one bicep, his star sign ‘Scorpio’ on the other, Lord Shiva on a forearm, his parents’ names and his playing numbers. Above the God’s Eye he’d added an Om symbol. ‘I have started to realise strongly that I am meant to be where I am,’ he said of it. Maybe he believed it or maybe it was just something he told journalists to keep them at bay, but it all added to his mystique.

Gavaskar and Tendulkar had each captained India on several occasions, apparently passively and reluctantly, but Kohli was different, seizing the job and steering India upwards by sheer force of will. His practice and training were ruthless. He demanded his teams be fit, so made himself the fittest cricketer on earth. He was not just the best batsman, but the best fielder, too. He patrolled the margins of marginal gains. On the field he was like a raw nerve in the wind, every small change of fortune showing on his face. He celebrated wickets and runs wildly. His hunger was palpable, insatiable, irresistible. He was the first player in history to score three hundreds in his first three innings as Test captain. He made double centuries in four consecutive series as India twice became the number one Test side in the world.

Virat Kohli had only failed – really failed – once in his life, in England in 2014, when India had lost a five-match series 3-1. In ten innings, he scored 1, 8, 25, 0, 39, 28, 0, 7, 6 and 20. Kohli never batted that way. Jimmy Anderson had dismissed him four times, and more than that, he had humiliated him, got inside his head, turned him inside out. The failure refracted Kohli’s record in a different light. Great batsmen, really great batsmen like Gavaskar and Tendulkar, did it everywhere, against everyone. So must he, if he was to think of himself as great.

The game moved on quickly, series upon series, format on format, but Kohli still burned with it. When England toured India at the end of 2016, he made 655 runs in eight innings at an average of 109.16, but India was as alien to England’s bowlers as England was to India’s batsmen, and so it wasn’t done, he wasn’t avenged. Not really. Not yet.

Now, Virat Kohli came to Edgbaston to bat for his reputation on Gary Barwell’s pitch. James Anderson was waiting for him. He had just turned 36 years old, ancient for a fast bowler, but somehow he was defying time. He had become the first England player to take 500 Test wickets and he was sailing towards the magic number of 563, the most ever by a fast bowler. The sportsman he most resembled was not another cricketer, but rather Roger Federer, an ageless sprite.

Anderson had created a character for himself, more of a caricature really, as a Grinch, condemned like all bowlers to long hours of poorly-rewarded labour, forever disappointed by dropped catches and batsmen that didn’t back up his efforts. The reality was different. In England, with the swinging, seaming Duke’s ball, he took his Test wickets at an average of 23. He was sublimely skilful, endlessly patient, a cunning old predator with sharp teeth and a leather hide. Anderson in England was the final frontier for anyone who wanted to be the greatest batsman of the age.

There were no secrets in modern cricket. Every ball of every match was televised, analysed, logged. Everyone knew everything about everyone else. In a way, it made things more difficult, but in another, advantage was negated unless you were prepared to be audacious and radical. And that was difficult because modern cricket was endless. In the last year Kohli had gone from India to Sri Lanka, back to India, then to South Africa and had played international cricket against Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa before going back to India to join his IPL franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore for two months and then travelling to Ireland for a couple of T20s, and then flying to England for T20 and ODI series before the Test series began. He had juggled formats throughout but moving from IPL cricket to Test matches in England was the most jarring change of all, and it was the one he had to make quickly. He’d signed up to play a few games for Surrey – even more cricket – to try and acclimatise but the Indian board pulled him out after he injured his neck playing for Royal Challengers.

And everywhere he went, he was Kohli, captain, star batsman, main attraction, rock star. Every minute of every day chopped up, portioned out, consumed.

At Edgbaston, England batted first and made 287, but had semi-collapsed after reaching 216-3 when Kohli ran out his opposite number Joe Root with a direct hit from midwicket. Kohli had seized the moment, blowing kisses and mocking a ‘mic-drop’ celebration Root had performed at Headingley during an ODI.

But he still had to bat. He came in amid ruins of India’s own, as 50-0 became 59-3, Anderson bowling at one end as if the gods decreed it, the crowd full of crackle and buzz, electricity in the air.

Anderson began: outswinger, outswinger, off cutter, outswinger, inswinger. Kohli went leave, block, leave, leave, block. He squirted to gully to get off the mark. He hit mid on with a sweet drive on the up. He left or blocked ten more, got a couple of singles and a boundary through third man. It was lunch.

He had one thought in his head, one thought he’d been keeping for James Anderson: ‘Put your ego away.’ It was no good hitting a couple of big flashy drives and then nicking off. His circumspection was exaggerated to almost comic effect. He blocked and then shadow-blocked, left and then shadow-left. His ego was subjugated under repetition and ritual. His plan became clear, and it was audacious in its way. Kohli had to stop being Kohli in order to win. He had made a couple of technical changes, batting outside of his crease to counter as much of Anderson’s late swing as he could, and making sure that his hands did not get outside the line of his body. He played the line of the ball and trusted that anything wider would miss his bat.

Unlucky, pal…

After lunch, Anderson and Ben Stokes bowl together. Anderson, 36 years old, corded and lithe like Federer, has already bowled ten overs, and now, at the end of his eleventh, he gets Kohli on strike and keeps him there. Stokes offers India nothing at the other end, and so Kohli faces twenty-six consecutive deliveries from Anderson as Anderson gives everything to win this battle, to win this war that began four years ago and that hangs in the balance now. It’s one of those sequences that can only happen in long games and in long series, when butterflies flap their wings on one side and tidal waves roll in at the other.

On the twenty-sixth delivery, Jimmy Anderson wins.

Kohli edges and Dawid Malan drops it at second slip.

The sliding doors slide open. Virat Kohli walks through them and into his unknowable future.

No other Indian player can get to thirty, so Kohli, their captain, takes their burden too, he scores their runs and his runs. He is on 97 when the ninth Indian wicket falls and Umesh Yadav walks in. Ben Stokes bowls short and wide and Kohli lets his hands go at last, and carves it to the third man boundary. He screams like a free man, free of the demons of four years ago, free of James Anderson, free of the shadows of Gavaskar and Tendulkar.

Great players do it everywhere, against everyone.

He kisses his wedding finger and blows the kiss along the bat to Anushka in the stands.

When he hits Adil Rashid’s googly wide of Jimmy Anderson at long on, his score rises to 135, more than he made in ten innings in England last time. When he is last out for 149, he has scored 54 per cent of his teams runs. No one else makes more than 26.

Part II: Rohit In The Dark, coming next week. Subscribe by clicking the button. It’s free!