Even the Einstein among batsmen needs checks

The year 2017 was the seventieth anniversary of Indian independence. During the summer, a celebration of cricketing links between India and England over these decades was held at Lord’s, hosted by the Indian High Commissioner in London. A hundred and fifty or so guests, perhaps, mainly of Indian origin, were invited, along with a few cricketers from different generations, plus those minor divinities in their smart dark blue blazers, trim haircuts and beards, fit-looking and on the whole dashing – the Indian cricket team. The senior god was their captain – the handsome, severe and charming, Virat Kohli.
The format of the event started with drinks and chat in the Long Room…An interviewer went from one cricketing celebrity to another with a microphone, for short conversations about their experiences against each other. The audience quickly became restive. The buzz of their conversations grew louder, distracting from the interviews.
Suddenly Kohli stepped forward, asking for the microphone. He was blunt. You should keep quiet and listen to what people have to say, he pronounced. It’s impolite to talk among yourselves. People were shocked into silence, but only temporarily…I was impressed by this. It’s one thing to respond to questions when given the floor and the microphone; one’s right to speak has been underlined, one’s duty clear. It is quite another to interrupt the flow (both of interview and of distracting conversation) without invitation.

His confidence, his ease with the mantle of leadership, his authority, all were strikingly evident. Here was a man with an independent and courageous mind. Many of these qualities are apparent on the field in his captaining of India. Watch Kohli and you sense from his reactions a great deal about the way the game is going. He wears his emotions on his sleeve. He is fierce and forceful, keen-eyed, absolutely focused, dynamic.
Along with passionate desire and high standards go the huge pleasure of joint success and the desolation of disappointment, each emotion at times plainly visible. He will speak his mind bluntly, as at the High Commissioner’s party, if he feels the opposition have behaved badly.
At press conferences he is articulate, open and challenging. He will use sarcasm to deal with what he thinks are foolish questions, while at the same time being frank about the team’s shortcomings. He is up for an argument about his changing of sides from match to match, even often when the team has won; he refuses to go by results only. ‘We have a large squad because there are that many players who can do the job.’ He is always on the look-out for improvements. The players have to be hard on themselves…
He has known hard times. His lawyer father died when Virat was sixteen. The family had to move. He has moved a long way in the next fourteen years…
Kohli is clearly the best batsman in the world. He averages over fifty in all three formats. He has a fantastic record chasing targets in one-day cricket… As Suresh Menon wrote in 2016 of his fantastic ability to make use of the classical alongside the innovative: he has made a ‘bridge across two cultures’ – the culture of Test cricket and that of limited-overs cricket. He adds: For every cringe-evoking shot played by a desperate batsman for whom the end justifies the means, Kohli has a phalanx of answers, both visually pleasing, and thoroughly effective. His understanding of space and time is unrivalled.
Truly an Einstein among batsmen.
No human being has all attributes; no attribute is without its damaging converse. A second question-mark against Kohli has been raised by cricket historian and writer, Ramachandra Guha… In January 2018, he wrote in The Telegraph (Kolkata) newspaper about his apprehensions about Kohli. In his view, Kohli is one of those liable to be the recipient of a damaging deference (from the BCCI).
Guha describes how, watching Kohli ‘play two exquisite square drives against Australia in 2016’, he concluded, not without sadness, ‘there goes my boyhood hero [Gundappa] Viswanath from my alltime India XI’. (His current first five in the batting order are: Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Kohli.)
Having remarked that captaincy ‘only reinforces Kohli’s innate confidence’, he writes: ‘No one in the entire history of the game in India has quite had [Kohli’s] combination of cricketing greatness, personal charisma and this extraordinary drive and ambition to win, for himself and the team.’ He adds that he has ‘manifest intelligence (not merely cricketing) and absolute self-assurance’.
But – and here is the ‘but’ – when Kohli has so much influence, this is precisely the time to remind ourselves of how we must not allow individual greatness to shade into institutional hubris. ...To the corruption and cronyism that has so long bedevilled Indian cricket has recently been added a third ailment: the superstar syndrome. Kohli is a great player, a great leader, but in the absence of institutional checks and balances, his team will never achieve the greatness he and his fans desire.
In other words, to balance his own strength, Kohli needs strong men around him. He needs, Guha suggests, people to challenge his views, to stand up to his convictions. He needs a coach of the calibre of Anil Kumble. All this makes sense to me. As US President, John Kennedy had an inner group whose task was to question and argue against all his plans and proposals. He needed his own checks and balances. To prevent proper pride crossing the narrow line into arrogance, so perhaps does Kohli.