When Virat Kohli made his Test debut in June 2011 in Kingston, Jamaica, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman were still around. When Sachin Tendulkar played his last Test in November 2013 in Mumbai, eight of those who played in the match are playing under Kohli today.
Curiously, eight men who were with the current India skipper during his Test debut are still active, though only four represent the nation. Murali Vijay and Ishant Sharma are in his Test XI, while MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina figure in the shorter formats.
Till Tendulkar left the scene, Kohli batted at No 5 in Tests. He opened the innings with Delhi teammate Gautam Gambhir in his losing ODI debut against Sri Lanka in Dambulla in August 2008. It took two more years for him to make his Twenty20 debut against Zimbabwe in June 2010.
Kohli himself has admitted that it was Dhoni who gave him the confidence of surviving in the big league by backing him at every turn of his career. Today when he is getting a grip of captaincy, Dhoni is still with him, guiding him in the shorter formats. Dhoni is not only marshalling field arrangements while Kohli is busy in crucial positions, he is in a more-active role as a mentor to the two young wrist-spinners Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal, guiding them to amazing success.
Kohli makes blunders, no doubt, and is adamant in backing his decisions, more so when the media questions him. Like some of his predecessors, he appears to have a poor opinion about cricket reporters. So much so that he has gotten personal with correspondents with needless arguments on a couple of occasions.
Rightly, though, he refused to be carried away by all the media attention after his team outclassed the South Africans in the ODI series, winning it 5-1. Kohli expressed his feelings in biting words. “I know for a fact that 90 per cent of people didn’t give us a chance after two Tests. We understand where we’ve come from.
“I am not going to live in a dreamland right now, accept all the praise, sit here, and feel good about this. Because it doesn’t matter to me. Honestly it doesn’t. It didn’t matter when we were 2-0 down; it doesn’t matter now that we are 5-1 up. What matters is the respect in the change-room.”
You have to give it to Kohli for batting like a champion despite his running battles with the media. It only proves that he is a strong character. When he is out in the middle, off-the-field happenings do not seem to bother or distract him. He made 558 runs with three hundreds.
Kohli thinks he is just doing his job that he’s supposed to, and that he’s not doing anyone a favour. He couldn’t care less for tags and headlines. Things can’t always be as exciting as they are now for him and his team. Some of his words could haunt him on a different occasion. Kohli has to realise that the media is doing its job, and that he has to answer questions, even if they are at times frivolous or inconvenient.
Tendulkar could not take criticism. He threw in the towel and he was better off for it. Dravid too could not take it for long, and quit captaincy to concentrate on his batting in his last years.
Unlike the two stalwarts, Kohli has everything going for him. His word carries during selection meetings, and he has a coach who thinks no end of him, boosting his morale in going about his job with aggression. The support staff is well in tune with Kohli’s cricketing philosophy.
There are ways and ways to disarm aggressive media-folk, but things should not reach a pass where he has to be told that if he can’t stand the heat, he should get out of the kitchen. (Veturi Srivatsa is a senior journalist and the views expressed here are personal. He can be reached at sveturi@gmail.com)