The big Kohli puzzle: what should we make of his on-field aggression?

It preceded actor Naseeruddin Shah’s controversial Facebook post by just a few hours. It came somewhere in the middle of the lunchtime review show of the ongoing India-Australia Test series being played at Optus stadium in Perth. On the fourth day of the second test match, while looking at some of the clips of Indian skipper Virat Kohli’s on-field confrontations with his Australian counterpart Tim Paine, former Indian cricketer and commentator Sanjay Manjrekar couldn’t help but cringe slightly in the presence of his fellow commentators Michael Clarke, the former Australian captain, and Mark Butcher, former English cricketer.

A visibly embarrassed Manjrekar went on to ask: “Is the Brand Kohli, the great batsman that he undoubtedly is, letting him get away with a lot of stuff on the field?” He then reminded viewers of Kohli’s taunting celebration of a great century the day before; the Indian captain had apparently gestured with his gloves that he let his bat speak tons. Assuming there wasn’t any backstory to that gesture in a match which witnessed the Aussies defeating India to level the series 1-1, Manjrekar asked what many would have liked to know from the Indian captain—“Who is saying that your bat doesn’t talk?”

For a few of us out there, who are steeped in the old-world civility of this gentleman’s game, the unnecessary gesture didn’t fit neatly with the greatness of the technically-polished hundred that Kohli had just scored on a fast and bouncy Perth pitch. In getting bemused by Kohli’s reaction to reaching the milestone with that gentle straight drive off Mitchell Starc, one may go on to do something that’s dreaded: look (and compare) players belonging to two different generations.

Still, comparisons are inevitable and almost seems to be Virat’s fate—that too when it’s Perth. One cannot help but recall what went down in Perth 26 years ago when another Indian master scored a great century. A school-boyish 18-year-old Sachin Tendulkar, Manjrekar’s teammate on that Australian tour, was conventionally understated as he raised his bat to acknowledge the crowd’s applause after scoring a memorable century on a challenging Perth pitch in the last Test match during India’s 1991-92 tour of Australia. Interestingly, both—Sachin and Virat—have scored their respective Perth tons in the first innings, and both, during losing causes.

Except, the different interpretations of Virat’s century-celebration gesture, his on-field skirmishes with the Aussies this time haven’t really sent anyone reaching for the conduct rulebook. Both Virat and his counterpart Tim Paine have said that the exchange of words didn’t cross the line of on-field verbal combat. If Paine said he enjoyed it, Virat’s point is that “as long as there is no swearing, the line doesn’t get crossed”.

“The line” has been a recent awareness for him. In an interview with Fox Sports early this month, Kohli admitted that in the early years of his international career, he didn’t know where to draw the line when it came to on-field behaviour. He claimed to be a “massively different person” from what he was during his last two tours of Australia. But, one isn’t sure whether a changed Virat Kohli would be good news for millions of his admirers across the world—especially in India. Besides his obvious status as a great batsman who is set to rewrite many records, isn’t Virat Kohli’s aura that of one which is inseparable from the on-field aggressor, and one of being a fist-pumping gladiator with a bat in his hand, leading the Indian side?

In fact, far from being shielded against scrutiny, one could be tempted to rephrase Manjrekar’s question and ask: does the Brand Kohli actually thrive on the Indian captain’s aggressive conduct on the field as much it does on his great achievements with the bat? Does Kohli’s appeal owe as much to his brilliance as a batsman as much it does to being seen as an embodiment of the street-fighter killer instinct?

For the record, Kohli has been aware of how his approach has been divergent from the conventional mould of niceties on the cricket field amid a hard-fought a contest. “I was never a perfect mould of typical, old school cricketer, I always just wanted to find my own way and I guess those things were a part of that journey,” Kohli told Australian cricketing legend Adam Gilchrist in the Fox Sports interview.

For a generation that has grown up with calm restraint and humility, concealing the steely resolve of Tendulkar, Kumble, Dravid, or more recently, Dhoni, Virat Kohli is certainly a point of departure. Apart from the interregnum of a vocal and shirt-waving Sourav Ganguly-led Indian side, seeing India as the “soft” side was the default perspective of an average cricket follower, especially when vis-à-vis active sledging was a mark of the attacking brand of cricket played by world-beating sides like Australia for two decades (starting from the early 90s).

The lack of killer instinct is one of the more popular explanations Indians offered to console the mismatch of their abundant cricketing talent and mediocre outcomes on win-loss statistics. For all his conduct as a gentlemanly cricketer and a great batsman, it’s interesting how many young Indians remember Sunil Gavaskar’s playing days for his 1981 Melbourne walkout after a controversial umpiring decision and a spat with Dennis Lillee.

In this context, the emergence of the Brand Kohli coincided with a time when India had finally started dominating world cricket and the new batting superstar Kohli was the brash West Delhi boy answering on-field verbal fire with fire. As Kohli went on to scale phenomenal heights of success with his bat, the aggression wasn’t tempered with career-saving anxieties.

Yet, the Kohli saga was devoid of something which needed to be addressed. Sporting icons say there is an element of vicarious fulfilment in the ways we cherish a different type of hero. Are they responding to our deeper need to succeed in certain ways? Is their success about us or merely about their superb performances? Santosh Desai, advertising professional and social commentator, used this to probe the thought that although Indians may like Virat Kohli, they would never love him the same way as they did Sachin Tendulkar or Dhoni. He argues that our urge to succeed was reflected in the Sachin and Dhoni narrative but Virat has perhaps come at a time when cricketing success doesn’t evoke the same yearning or passion in us.

“The larger reason is that Virat Kohli lacks a narrative. His performance works for himself and the team—and by extension, for the country—but it does not reveal any cherished truths about us as a collective. It does not feed into any deep-seated anxiety, nor does it help us believe in an incredible dream. Sachin Tendulkar spoke to a nation’s need to be taken seriously. He was our cherub who could take on the world effortlessly. The Sachin narrative was always about us, never about him—we owned him and willed him to succeed,” Desai observes.

The Kohli narrative hinged on something inspirational for the youth. Particularly appealing was the impressive level of fitness and the turnaround he achieved by becoming one of the fittest sportsmen, globally. The fitness story, however, became a subtext to the larger branding of the gladiator Kohli—the fighter who could do all the great work of skill as well as the dirty work of indulging in verbal duels on the cricket field.

On numerous occasions, Kohli has tried to explain his on-field conduct as a part of the charged passion he needs to keep him going; a type of fuel that drives him to fight and perform. Though India has been home to a few absolute greats of the game, this combative and fist-thumping approach to total involvement and performance is something new.

This, however, means that the abstract expectations from an Indian public figure weren’t getting reciprocated in the go-getter brash branding of Kohli. One such expectation, obviously, was of humility.

Eight years ago, in a piece about Sachin’s legacy in popular perceptions, journalist and novelist Manu Joseph talks about the high premium we place on humility in judging people and what it actually deprives us of. “No other nation is as fond of this line: ‘What strikes you about him is his humility’. It is a compliment usually given to a celebrity with good manners, who has made a journalist feel comfortable, who has offered him a glass of water to drink. How many times have we seen Tendulkar being described as humble, and readily accepted that view? And his self-centred caution that ensures he does not always speak his mind, are we misinterpreting that disappointing aspect of his personality for humility? He might be humble, as somehow required by all his devotees, but my point is we don’t know,” Joseph observes.

What, however, is also clear, is that in his off-field analysis of the game or in his interactions with the media, Kohli is generous and insightful in praising the strengths and performance of the opposition. That’s something even Manjrekar, a critic of Kohli’s on-field antics, has credited the Indian skipper with. But his (Kohli’s) unprecedented control of the Indian team has also led to some other concerns.

Being the country’s top sporting brand, with no parallel power centre that is half his stature in the Indian team, Kohli is now seen to have a free run with all his decisions, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is evidently playing along.

For instance, early this year, historian and cricket chronicler Ramachandra Guha slammed BCCI for surrendering to Kohli’s reluctance to work with coach Anil Kumble, leading to the latter’s resignation. In a piece for The Telegraph, Guha argued that the Kohli-Kumble clash was rooted in the fact that while the BCCI worshipped Kohli, it also grew inconvenient with a more important fact that Kumble could stand his ground because, in the setup, he alone was in Kohli’s league as a cricketer and a character. While conceding that arrogance and authority might be necessary for Kohli’s approach to his personal game as a batsman, the institution of the team could also suffer because of those same attributes. “The captain’s authority and arrogance, so vital and important to his personal success, must be moderated and managed if it is to translate into institutional greatness,” wrote Guha.

Last month, the controversy around Kohli’s seemingly jingoistic reaction to a cricket fan’s criticism once again revealed a familiar script that Indian celebrities adhere to, and in the process, make a more-patriotic-than-thou projection a part of their branding. In a piece last year, the author had reflected on some aspects of such projection exercises aimed at public consumption of Indian celebrities.

Australian media has been relatively kinder to Kohli on this tour and in fact, seems to be in awe of his greatness as the best batsman in the contemporary world cricket. That’s quite a shift from the hostile Australian press that Kohli got during Australia’s tour of India early last year. In a piece, the author had dwelt on how the DRS-Gate had almost escalated in a war of words between the Indian and Australian media defending their captains—while attacking the rival captain. The latest confrontations in Perth, however, have been largely controlled affairs with both captains downplaying it as nothing more than on-field banters. That, hopefully, can help focus on the quality of cricket which is expected to be quite competitive in the remaining two test matches of an intensely fought series between the two teams.

By inviting awe, admiration, cringe and hostility (in that order), Virat Kohli’s presence on a cricket field often pits his sublime greatness as a batsman against his on-field aggression. What, however, isn’t that obvious is that the latter is integral to the appeal of Brand Kohli for millions of his admirers. That shouldn’t lend itself to the moral binary of success, trumping the old world charm and niceties of the gentleman’s game. More than anyone, Kohli should know that “crossing the line” isn’t cricket. On that note, over to the Melbourne Cricket Ground.