It was when Virat Kohli became captain of the U-19 team that I started noticing him. Even in those relatively young years, he knew how to organise a team and get the best out of his fellow cricketers. He was super-motivated and always led from the front, often with a spectacular fielding effort or a good knock. On the field, he might be emotional, but deep inside he was always composed, read the game beautifully and knew what to get from himself as well as those around him. I don’t know what he did in the dressing room, but it worked and we won the World Cup without losing a single game. Later, he went on to become one of India’s most successful Test captains.
I don’t remember him as much of a talker when the coaching staff was around. Kohli was not like some of the kids who always sought some advice or the other. Often, he found solutions by himself and worked hard to eliminate the chinks in his batting. The conversations we had about technique and other stuff were precise and to the point.
The questions Kohli asked were straight and clear, like he knew his game inside out. Once, he told me that he was unhappy as he often got out after getting starts. He would score a quick 30 or 40 and then get out, often playing a careless shot. He told me he felt he was over-aggressive, but couldn’t stop being one. He was confused about when to start playing those big shots. I told him that he was already batting at a brisk pace and that there’s no need to play the big one until the 40th over. My advice was simple: Play the normal game till the 40th over, assess the game situation and then accelerate. The method worked, he started getting those big knocks and showed terrific game sense. Now he knows exactly when to push the run rate and when not to.
Right from those days, Kohli had a good technique and it was more a case of fine-tuning bits here and there, besides getting into good positions and trusting the basics. He was a more on-side player then. Lots of flicks and on-drives. He was not much of a cover-driver back then as he is now. The shot did not stand out then as it does today. Those were the shots he picked up along the way, I guess. That’s how great batsmen are, they are always learning something or the other.
As one would know, Kohli was a bit of a livewire, always doing something or the other. When he was not batting, he was turning his arm over in some corner of the nets, or giving some throw-downs to other batsmen.
He was extremely hardworking too. As the cliche goes, he was the first to enter the nets and the last to leave. He would keep on batting and tire out the bowlers. But one saw his hunger, he always wanted to keep improving, even though he was in fact quite evolved for his age.
He was a bit chubby those days, but that did not come in the way of hard work. He used to train hard, throw his body around and was ready to cop blows on his body or get bruises on his arm.
There was always this infectious energy. Kohli’s real transformation in international cricket came after he shed those extra pounds and became extremely fit, I think a couple of years after India won the 2011 World Cup. It took his game to a different level, made him a world-beater. I was not surprised because I knew he was an extremely hardworking chap and it was a matter of him putting his head into it. That’s why one sees him bouncing back from slumps in form and finding ways to overcome his deficiencies. That I think was the biggest turning point of his career.
There, of course, was no shortage of motivation. Kohli would set his eyes on the ultimate prize and sweat extremely hard to realise it. He always wanted to win the U-19 World Cup, as if nothing else would satisfy him; it happened around the time of the first Indian Premier League auction and there was a lot of talk, amongst the boys, about the possibility of some of them being picked. He told some of his teammates that he wanted to buy his first car with the money he got from the league and bought one soon after that. He was super pumped up. He did and keeps doing it. Motivation and hard work, those are the two big recipes for his success.
