Overs Limited or Unlimited, No Limit to His Skills

Virat Kohli is now seen as INDIA’S BATTING FULCRUM in all formats. His poise in Tests acquires an aggressive veneer in ODIs and then gains dollops of explosive energy in Twenty20s.

- K.C.Vijaya Kumar

There is a sense of perma-nence about Virat Kohli that belies logic because sport is transitory and athletes, irrespective of their talent and greatness, eventually head towards an exit gate that is nudged by time. Even an icon like Sachin Tendulkar, who stretched his career well past two decades and enriched our memory-milestones, found his toughest foe in the process of ageing.

However, cricketing twilight is extremely far on Kohli’s horizon and for now, the 25-year-old is all over the place and there are sound cricketing reasons for that. After skipper M. S. Dhoni, he is India's absolute certainty in all formats of the game. He is also tipped to lead India in the future, a taste of which he already had in the recent Asia Cup in Dhaka. There is no doubting that his talent and demeanour over the past two years have largely silenced those questions about the angry brat that resided within him during his early days in top-flight cricket.

Step onto any arterial road in India’s big cities and billboards in which Kohli is plugging shoes or cars, pop up. Open the newspapers or magazines and Kohli is there both in the sports pages and on Page Three, the latter though is no fault of his as sections of the media have no qualms in peering into the private lives of high-profile sportsmen.

WHATEVER BE THE nature of our gaze — sporting, gawking on roads or plain salacious — there is no running away from Kohli. His celebrity status was entirely shaped by his success in cricket because brands seek out ambassadors, who promise consistency and longevity and in Kohli, most corporates have found a winner.