From 2012 to 2017, on and off, I wrote retirement tributes for a website called Sportskeeda. The first one was published in September 2012. Titled ‘The Last of the Gentlemen—a personal history’, it was an overwrought eulogy to Dravid and Laxman, mild-mannered, hardworking batsmen who, while not being impassive, didn’t always wear fervour on their loose sleeves.
I was 21. Chintzy nostalgia was my currency then, as a writer and as a person. It was many years before I came across a column where Nisha Susan quoted an unnamed writer saying “Sentimentality is emotion written by someone who doesn’t know how to write it.”
Matters of style aside, the central idea of that tribute still stands. The retirement of these South Indian batters signalled the end of an era. Tendulkar would retire from ODIs a few weeks on, prompting an outpouring that would earn me the then princely sum of Rs 10,000 and a dream of working with words for a living, still the most fulfilling and stupidest thing I’ve done.
Virat Kohli, who announced his retirement from Test cricket earlier this week, was a year into his red-ball career then. He was decidedly not a gentleman. He was a foul-mouthed, bratty dude who had the talent but perhaps not the temperament. Alyssa Healy tells a funny story from around the time. It’s about how Kohli rocked up to her and Ellyse Perry and described himself as the “next big thing in Indian cricket.”
It was exactly the kind of thing that cheesed me off, in line with my upbringing in a ‘good home’, where we put our head down and prized modesty. Genius for us was something whispered, not proclaimed with a guttural cry. And here was this punk with a fuckboy stubble, the kind of parvenu who’d rock up at IPL afterparties with spiky hair and a figure-hugging Ed Hardy t-shirt.
It was fitting that his first century came in what would turn out to be Dravid and Laxman’s final Test. When you watch footage of Adelaide 2012 now, you see the traits that would recur over a career: a wristy whip off Nathan Lyon through cover; a lofted shot picked from outside off and deposited over wide mid-on; even the dreaded poking on the fifth-stump line.
Then, you also see the things that wouldn’t repeat as much—chubby cheeks, the Nike sticker on the bat, a century celebration while there was still a single for the taking. “He’s a flashy player, and he’s a player for the future,” goes Mark Taylor on commentary. At the time, I found none of this endearing; not in the Test format, no, where it was important to be of dignified bearing and respect the history of this game.
In the summer of 2014, when he was struggling with swinging conditions on his first England tour, I was freshly done with college; not yet in the real world, and still turning my nose up at displays of pageantry. The thing is: I was able to overlook arrogance if it came with a high degree of flair and insouciance, and though Kohli was “flashy” compared to the general staid-ness that marked Indian cricket in the 1990s and early 2000s, he neither had Lara’s ballistic backlift nor Sangakkara’s silky sophistication. Kohli was not cool, he cared a little too much.
In his technique, he was compact and conventional; a busy cricketer, and busy cricketers are rarely a feast for the eyes. In the way he seemed to need an audience and an edgy encounter to sprout wings, Kohli was a more natural successor to Pietersen than Tendulkar.
As for me—by the end of the year, I’d had a humbling experience during a long internship at a private equity fund. Chastised by the insults to my intelligence, dazzled by the brilliance of my bosses, I was itching to prove myself at my first big boy job at a law firm in London. I was also receptive to a certain kind of tenacity that I imagined would be required to stay afloat in cut-throat workplaces.
By the time the coronation came in the 2014-2015 Border Gavaskar Trophy in Australia, I was in a slightly different mindset, less tangled up in transmitted ideas of right and wrong and more chomping at the bit to have a go at life in general. I was primed to finally warm up to Kohli, who, as it turns out, was also on his way to becoming his own man.
He was in imperious touch that winter. Four hundreds, including two in Adelaide, the second in an audacious but failed final day chase of 364. Finally, the shades of Tendulkar: he kept his head when all about him were losing theirs. But there was nothing of the Tendulkar Era in the way he got under the skin of the Aussies. The flab was cut, in body and mind. This was the beginning of the chiselled monster of the next six years, the 75 kg specimen of clean eating and cleaner stroke-play. The madness had a method.
His provocations, both from bat and tongue, took on a sharper edge. The prickled bloke who flipped a bird to the SCG crowd on the 2012 tour now sat combatively in front of the Aussie media, telling them “You guys hate me and I like that.” Single-handedly, he added a spicy dimension to what was still a one-sided rivalry. Kohli had left India as its most promising batsman; he returned as its 26-year-old Test captain.
From my personal Kohli-Cam, the next couple of years are a blur. I was away and he was home, in the sense that I was living abroad and had a demanding day job (and money to spend in the evenings) and India had home seasons, where, on dust bowls around the country, our man was cutting, nudging, driving, sweeping, whacking his way to big scores and burnishing his reputation as the most interesting cricketer in the world.
These were also his prime courting years with Anushka. India didn’t tour in the two summers I lived in London, but I did get to watch Pakistan and Sri Lanka at Lord’s, where I had to grudgingly admit that Virat Kohli was not the only thing saving Test cricket.
The home Tests are also a blur because when I look back now, it’s the SENA tours that loom large in the mind. In this melange of random images, he’s always in the foreground with his upturned collar, twirling his bat or chirping in the slip cordon, wearing a jumper or sunglasses, his whites unsullied by parched earth. And in the background: billowing backs of white shirts at an overcast, windy Oval; lager-swilling on the grassbanks in Durban; a hulking MCG made benign by the crisp quality of Australian sunlight.
In the prompt machine in my head, at least, Kohli is truly carrying the brown cricketer’s burden. These corners of a foreign field are where he earned his stripes, and by taking the fight to the game’s traditional conscience-keepers, gum-chewers and fire-breathers, he played a starring role in reminding them of where the sport’s power balance now lies. On the greenest grass, under the bluest skies, our bearded king was on the prowl, breathing life into every ball, spoiling for a scrap, roiling a civilisation used to having its way.
That’s why 2018 comes to me in vivid colour. The year of the holy trifecta of away hundreds: Centurion (January), Edgbaston (August), Perth (December). All three getting India close to the opposition’s first innings total; all three in ultimately losing causes.
Centurion is my favourite of the three, a masterclass in control and balance. He’s batting outside the crease but has enough time to get his head above the ball and smother the scented poison of the South African pace quartet. And you see what has changed from Adelaide 2012 when he gets his century—now, he’s watching the ball even as he reaches his milestone, scampering back for a second because there’s still a job to be done. There’s an anguished comment under a YouTube video of the ball-by-ball of this innings: “So outside the off stump is not a problem.” More than many others, this knock brings alive the phrase that Atherton used in his tribute: “a touch player in a muscular era.”
That was the summer I took a leap of faith and moved to Delhi for my first newsroom job. Outwardly, it formalised my career switch. Inwardly, it gave an utterance to my craving for freedom. Tie and suit jacket were only sartorial manifestations of a deeper disconnect. But well-wishers wondered how I would cope in the city—thought to be loud, abrasive, showy. But I’d like to believe I threw myself into it, all of it: crafty landlords and riotous amaltas; the internet wires chewed up by squirrels (or monkeys?) and the grey hornbills of Sunder Nursery.
Feeling alive in his city, I was hyped enough for Kohli’s UK redemption tour to write a kind of preview for the English summer. One of its lines: “The sound of leather meeting willow on a mild-weathered day at Lord’s is a special kind of music.” Old habits die hard.
From a Kohli point of view, it was a series for the ages. Arguably the series for the ages. The 4-1 scoreline looks more unflattering than it was: the first Test we lost by 31 runs and the fourth by 60. It was the Kohli show throughout. Two hundreds and three fifties laid the ghosts of 2014 to rest. Many of the images and clips you’ve seen in the edits through this week are from that tour—the kisses blown to Root after running him out from an improbable angle; the “common” that all of Edgbaston heard when he got his hundred.
And then there was Australia, where he led the team to a first-ever series win. In Perth, on a pitch that was only two shades of green lighter than the outfield, he swallowed the sting and followed the swing to compile 123 memorable runs. When he reached his milestone by helping an inswinging Starc delivery down the ground, he took his helmet off, pointed at his bat, and made the talking gesture with his gloves. Uff. This was Kohli at the peak of his powers—carrying a team, a broadcast, a format by force of personality.
It was the completion of my conversion to his cult, and so to the idea that life needn’t be observed quietly from a corner, that it’s almost necessary to make a song and dance about your skill if you live off it. I had grown up hearing ‘There’s a time and place for everything.’ But no, there was another world where every time and place must adapt to your thing.
I won’t go so far as to say that, in my first winter in Delhi, I transcended my own personality or background. In fact, I was gasping for breath in the noxious air, but even a prescription for an inhaler didn’t cripple me from greedily gulping the city’s seasons, its monuments, its sprawl. In short, I’d reached a point where I found it amusing and not appalling that the word ‘kaleshi’ (‘pugnacious’, in my inadequate translation) was often used as endearment in that city. Kohli was kaleshi, and he had the skills to back up the motormouth.
Test career-wise, things slid pretty consistently after that. That Perth hundred in December 2018 was his 25th. He finished his career in May 2025 with 30. Of course, there was a pandemic in the middle. And much else besides—two children, for the birth of whom he sat out away Tests against Australia in Winter 2020/21 and home ones against England in Feb/March 2024.
Meanwhile, the T20 juggernaut continued: three World Cups and six IPLs in this period, only one of which yielded him a trophy but most of which suggested that a lack of motivation has always been a surmountable problem for him. In these years, many millions joined our parasocial legion of Kohli fanatics—some satisfied with his electric presence on the field, some pining for lost youth, others filling their empty days by facelessly abusing Rohit fans.
When the Test career is seen from the point of view of numbers and his own lofty standards, there’s no escaping the precipitous decline of this period. The highlights buttress the story one number—9230—will tell. The slight tentativeness, the frequent scratchiness, the perceptive dimming of the fire that burns within: these will explain those 770 runs that never came.
Yet, even during this time of paltry pickings in his favourite format, his legend grew. Through Punjabi tweets that barely contained his gratefulness for his wife and child; through clips that suggested that a guy who once asked a journalist “Do I look the pooja-paath types” found solace in chanting the lord’s name; through shoulder shimmies with a freestyle dance group on Stereo Nation’s song ‘Ishq’. And perhaps this is the real legacy of Kohli—he could have remained in the gilded prison we built for him; but he evolved constantly, making choices that reflected a hunger for excellence in flannel but also life beyond it.
Six years is a long time, and life was happening to me, too. At various points during these years: I wrote a few things I’m proud of; I worked a dream job with an inspiring boss and a wonderful team; I learnt to express love and receive it; I saw birds I’d never seen in places I’d never been; I moved back home for the health of my parents; I met all kinds of people—kind, interesting, unhinged; I did things for the money; I did things for the thrill.
Even here, the numbers may tell a different story. I didn’t win any fancy awards, my bank balance looks pedestrian, the number of novels and screenplays I have written is still zero. I lost some love and drifted apart from a few friends. I tore one meniscus and the number of white strands in my beard crossed 10. But it’s not the whole story; it’s not the only story. Yes, there were lulls in the middle, mini-downfalls and mini-comebacks, but looking at the big picture, it was a happy, enriching time.
How can we end this? This story of the King and I. Maybe in the Wankhede stands in November last year, where the faithful sweated heavily as hawks circled above and New Zealand completed their whitewash. His batting returns were 1 and 4, but our eyes still sought him every moment India was in the field, where his involvement took the usual roles of elder statesman, team jester, rabble-rouser.
Or perhaps we can end at the Boxing Day Test at the MCG last year, where I was supposed to be but wasn’t because my application for a visa was twice turned down. Here was the pound of flesh extracted by my personal and professional freedom: apparently, it’s not enough for an unmarried, unsalaried brown man in his 30s to suggest in a cover letter that he wants to watch Kohli on his final tour to the country that ennobled him.
But, really, the best place to close this chapter would be to return to a Boxing Day past, to a cold, smoggy December day in Kalkaji, to an MCG bathed in sunshine. I’m in my little room, with its steel-frame single bed and flowery green bedcover. Kohli is walking out to a commentator saying “Every eyeball in the arena and around the world is on this man.”
On the broadcast, Melbourne comes to Delhi, in Rahul Bhattacharya’s words, “like a secret, crystalline”. I’m sipping my coffee, eating a cheesy egg toast, content with every life choice that has led to a moment when I can leisurely watch Test cricket at 11am on a weekday. Pujara is taking body blows at the other end. Kohli is seeing the ball beautifully, punching it down mid-on. He is in his kingdom, I am in mine.
Farewell, King. We’ll always have 2018.
I wish this was a Google doc so that I could comment on every line that I love but there are too many. How you catch the emotion of a moment in words Vikram!
accidently came on this post and now feel like it was meant by to be read by me, too good