Virat Kohli is 36, but he’s a fit and hungry 36. And his rejuvenated energy ensures an exciting couple of years for the India batting great.
He came, he spoke, he charmed. Everyone. He chose his words carefully, took his time mulling over questions thoughtfully lobbed by Isa Guha, and hit every metaphorical ball out of the park with a panache that has been his calling card for at least the last decade and a half.
Virat Kohli during the 2025 Champions Trophy(ANI)
This was as close to Virat Kohli completely unplugged and totally chilled out as one could get. It was the final act of the two-day RCB Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit; from the time Saturday’s proceedings began, every pair of eyes kept darting quick looks at the watch to see when the hands would tick over to 4.00 pm.
Kohli arrived at the venue maybe a half hour before that, casually but nattily dressed, aware that he was the cynosure – he has had good practice at that – but taking it in his stride because that’s what he has learnt to do over the years. He walked into the summit hall to a thunderous ovation and held forth on a variety of topics, exuding a calmness and inner peace that Guha, the former England cricketer and now a television commentator, verbalised, echoing the sentiments of many who crammed the big-sized hall.
On the field, he can still be a stormy petrel, but he says he is making an effort to be less demonstrative without being less competitive. “Things are happening naturally with me, it’s getting tapered down naturally,” he remarked, quickly adding, “My competitiveness has not gone down. For a lot of people, it’s very difficult to process how the competitiveness is going to be at the same level if the aggression is not. You can still be aggressive in your mind, but you don’t necessarily need to express it out there every now and then out of frustration, which I have.
“In the recent past as well, which is not a great thing, to be honest — I don’t feel great about those things myself,” he continued, alluding to the shoulder charge on Australian debutant Sam Konstas during the Boxing Day Test at the MCG in December.
Some of his revelations were, well, revealing. Such as his almost-total social media detox. Such as being careful of what brands he wants to be associated with, and whether those brands resonate with his personality but more than that, with his values. Such as starting off wanting to be the fittest version of himself and ending up making it a non-negotiable facet when he became the Indian captain. Such as the finality of his retirement from Twenty20 Internationals, though he did joke about ‘sneaking in’ for a match if India made it to the Olympic Games final in Los Angeles in 2028 when T20 cricket makes its debut.
Marrying prudence with philosophy and being realistic about where he stands in the larger scheme of things isn’t a new Kohli phenomenon. Recency bias, he pointed out, could lead him to believe that the latest tour of Australia was perhaps the most intensely disappointing because of how it unravelled after a century in the first Test. “I might not have an Australia tour again in me in four years’ time,” he acknowledged, with a rider, “I don’t know. I don’t have the chance to correct it. You have to make peace with whatever’s happened in your life.”
That word again – peace. That was the most obvious emotion that struck you as you sat there listening to him talk about the strength of the family, about his mother’s disappointment when he stopped eating paranthas as he revamped his eating and life habits more than a dozen years back, about how he doesn’t know what he will do post-retirement but that he is okay with that because what will be, will be.
A rejuvenated Kohli
But no one who has followed Kohli’s career even cursorily over the last several years should be surprised by what he said, and how he said it, because not only has he always been his own man, he has also been eloquent, has had a way with words and has never struggled to express himself. He will still snarl and swear and rage on the cricket field because it is impossible that his competitiveness will not occasionally find expression out in the middle, but increasingly, expressiveness will fade into the background because that’s what maturity and awareness and understanding bring in their wake.
Two and a half years back, Kohli spoke of the ‘fake intensity’ that had crept into his game because of his determination to keep playing. He has now rediscovered that intensity organically. He is 36, but a fit and hungry 36. And even more dangerous because his self-awareness is at an all-time high. An exciting couple of years in store, perhaps?
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