Virat Kohli is back where it all began. It was in Perth in 2012 that the world woke up to the feisty batting legend. Now, older & less prolific, he is back in Perth as India look to set the tone in Australia. Can Kohli script one final masterpiece in the land that forged his legend?
“I don’t know why people were after me. I don’t know why people have been questioning my technique or temperament so much.”
With eyes that were holding back tears that could flood the Pacific, this was 23-year-old Virat Kohli speaking to the media in Perth in January 2012. He had just top-scored with 44 on a bouncy WACA pitch in a shambolic Indian innings of 161 on Day One of the third Test during a series that resembled a horror show for India.
Border-Gavaskar Trophy
Kohli’s emotional burst was in response to a tweet by a former cricketer who had posted on Testeve, “Give Kohli another game just to be sure he does not belong here.”
Perth showed that Kohli belonged. He top-scored with 75 in the second innings too as India were dismissed for 171 to lose by an innings and plenty during a 4-0 shellacking.
Cut to 2024. The Indian great is back at the venue where he first established his credentials as a Test batter. Can the WACA, where the Team India is camping for match simulation and preparing for the opening contest of the Border Gavaskar Trophy at the nearby Optus Stadium from Friday, be the venue for his renaissance too?
A look at the Australian media, which often doesn’t hesitate to play 12th man for the team, makes you believe so. India’s arrival in Australia was announced with glowing full-page write-ups on Kohli in some of the leading Australian publications with Hindi and Punjabi headlines.
So what if he has scored only two centuries in the last five years and his average, once a proud 55, has plummeted to 47.83?
Ironically, the same media had painted him as a villain when the batter flicked the bird at a section of a raucous Sydney crowd which was giving him grief on the boundary.
The prickly 23-year-old was mercilessly sledged by the Aussie players too during his maiden Test hundred in Adelaide in the fourth Test. “To give it back verbally and then score a hundred is even better,” he said in the presser after his 116.
In the same interaction, he slammed the SCG crowd too.
“Don’t get drunk and abuse players.” Touche. Perth and Adelaide 2012 had given Kohli his passport to stardom. Adelaide 2014, though, was a visa to greatness. Leading India for the first time, he struck a hundred in each innings. (115, 141). The second ton was a clinic in mastering spinning conditions.
It also offered fans a window into his captaincy style: “Play to win.” India made a spirited dash at the target of 364 and fell 48 short. The crowds lapped up Kohli’s spunk. The spicy duels with Mitchell Johnson, especially during his 169 in the Boxing Day Test at MCG, were peak cinema.
At one point he drove Johnson straight, only to see the bowler stop the ball in his follow through and hurl it back to hit him. Kohli followed up by drilling Johnson through cover and blowing a kiss.
A Kohli press conference was the place to be at after such antics. Sample this: “There’s no good reason that I should respect some people when they are not respecting me.” Or this: “They were calling me a spoilt brat, and I said, ‘That’s the way I am. You guys hate me. I like that.'”
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More? “I like playing against Australia because it is very hard for them to stay calm. I don’t mind an argument. They don’t seem to be learning the lesson.”
Kohli was all passion and fire in 2014. Four years later, he married maturity with those traits. Already the world’s premier attacking batter across formats, Kohli showed how much he could romance struggle in the second Test as he compiled 123 off 257 balls at the Optus in hellish batting conditions.
After driving Mitchell Starc down the ground to reach three figures, he pointed to the bat, opened and closed his fist to say, ‘My bat talks now.’
India lost the Test but won the 2018 series 2-1. Ex-players had begun to hail Kohli as the ideal brand ambassador for Test cricket when it was being challenged by shorter formats. When Australia welcomed him again at the height of the Covid pandemic in Dec 2020, it was already announced that Kohli would play only the first Test, the pink ball D/N fixture at Adelaide.
Interestingly, his favourite venue had even offered to host his wedding in 2017. Kohli produced yet another defensive classic, a solid 74 off 180 balls before a misunderstanding with Ajinkya Rahane saw him get run out and limit India’s first innings total.
India were infamously bowled out for 36 in the second innings to lose that Test. And though under Rahane, they won an epic series 2-1, Kohli had nothing to do with that triumph. He was in India for the birth of his first child.
In the twilight of his career now, and with peers going past him in the quest for batting immortality, can Kohli summon one last effort and reclaim his aura in the land where he earned it first.
Now, only if the Aussies stopped being so nice to him.
