In the End, It Wasn’t the Runs, But the Revolution he brought mattered.
It was almost mid-afternoon.
The kind of afternoon when the country is emerging from a war-like moment, when every eye is fixed on the screen, waiting for the armed forces to speak on the targets hit and damages inflicted. The kind of afternoon that feels suspended when the world holds its breath a little and memories begin to echo.
Standing in a queue at a shopping mall, heavy with the scent of impatience and perfume, I was doomscrolling absentmindedly when a notification slipped in, small, almost forgettable.
“Virat Kohli retires from Test cricket.”
I didn’t read it. I felt it.
I felt it like the silence after a symphony, like the silence in a stadium just before the bowler runs in to deliver the first ball of the match.
Something had ended, not just a career, but a kind of belief, a kind of theatre, a kind of rage that had somehow become comfort.
There are players, and then there are forces of nature.
Kohli was the latter.
Not breeze, not drizzle, he was a summer storm.
And now, that storm has passed.
The Boy Who Would Be King
Once upon a time but not a fairytale, never a fairytale, there was a boy from Delhi who played cricket with the fury of a man wronged. He did not glide onto the scene with charm or grace. He arrived like a question: “Why not me?” He was not born into cricketing aristocracy. His runs were not an inheritance, but a rebellion. And that rebellion began not with centuries but with a funeral. When he lost his father, he did not mourn at home. He mourned at batting crease running between the wickets and the straight drives.
He scored 90 that day in a Ranji match, not because he had something to prove to the world, but because he had something to prove to grief. That grief would not define him. He would define himself.
And so began the saga. Not a gentle ascent, but a grinding, gasping, glorious climb.
Changing the Altitude of Ambition
We often measure greatness in aggregates. In averages, in centuries, in milestones carved into excel sheets. But Kohli’s legacy resists arithmetic. He did not just score runs; he changed the altitude of ambition. When he took over the reins of the Indian Test team, India could conquer at home. Easily. Abroad, the tale was different. Overseas pitches were graveyards for subcontinental dreams. Johannesburg was a riddle, Melbourne a mountain, Lord’s a lingering curse.
But Kohli did not carry that baggage
He packed only belief. He did not merely want to win abroad, he expected it. Every time. That expectation was not born out of misplaced arrogance. It was a fool’s dream. It was also architectural in design. He had built a team not just of talented men but of true believers. He made victory not a surprise but a standard. The 2018–19 series win in Australia was more than history. It was healing.
The Revolution Wrought in Sweat
What do we remember of great athletes? Sometimes, a particular shot that attaches itself to the players persona. Sometimes, an innings of importance. But more often, we forget the sweat, the hours behind the scenes, the sacrifices made in silence. Kohli transformed himself from a chubby prodigy into a figure carved in granite. It wasn’t vanity. It was a necessity. His body became a temple, and in doing so, he rewrote the rites of worship in Indian cricket. The Yo-Yo test became gospel. Protein replaced parathas. Gym routines replaced gossip.
Cricketing academies across the country echoed with a single mantra: talent is nothing without discipline.
This was not a fad. It was a cultural shift. Kohli didn’t merely lift dumbbells, he lifted standards.
Fire, Not Ice
There is a kind of captaincy that is glacial, calm, composed, calculating. And then, there was Kohli. He was fire. Not always controlled, not always careful, but always burning. He wore his heart not just on his sleeve but in his scream, in his celebrations, in his stare.
He was the main character in a five-day opera. And the opera played wherever he went, at Eden Gardens or Edgbaston, at the MCG or Mohali. He sledged, yes. But he also shouldered blame.
He roared, yes. But he also rallied. His intensity was not an act. It was essence. In his very first Test as captain, he made it clear: India would chase wins, not avoid losses. This was not survival.
This was siege.
Legacy Beyond the Ledger
By numbers alone, Kohli is monumental. India’s most successful Test captain. Nine consecutive series wins. Matched Ponting’s fabled team in terms of dominance. Defiance abroad.
But his legacy in Indian Cricket is not stored in excel sheets. It is unquantifiable. It is written into the body language of a new generation. Into the unblinking eyes of a debutant who stares down a superstar bowler. Into the run chases no longer feared but fancied. He made belief not a privilege, but a prerequisite.
The Culture He Left Behind
Indian cricket had long mirrored the country’s self-image, gifted, spiritual, artistic, but sometimes uncertain of its place in the world. Kohli changed that. He gave us a new template. Fierce. Fit. Fearless. We no longer bowed to foreign conditions. We beat them to our will.
And yet, what is most remarkable is how Kohli made Test cricket aspirational again. In a world increasingly swayed by pyrotechnics and twenty-over tamachas, he gave five-day cricket the urgency of a final act.
He did not whisper. He bellowed.
And we listened.
The Farewell We Never Gave
Sometimes I wonder why is it that Indian cricket legends so often slip away without ceremony? Only Sachin had his swan song. Laxman, Dravid, Dhoni, all disappeared before proper goodbyes. Now, Rohit and Kohli, too. No Wankhede or Chinnaswamy curtain fall. No roses on the pitch. No lap of honour. Just a simple post on Social Media. A statement.
A sigh.
But maybe that is the way King wanted it. No choreography. Just closure.
No flowers. Just facts.
The story ends, not with a script, but with silence. King signs off!
Greatness in Three Acts
If you asked a statistician, he would divide Kohli’s career into three neat eras.
The promise years. The peak. The plateau.
But that would be too clinical. Too hollow. Because Kohli’s career was never linear. It surged, it plunged, it raged like a monsoon river. Comebacks were stuff of legends. There were dry patches too. And there were trolls. There were taunts about fourth stumps.
But through it all, he never flinched.
He never stopped chasing that better version of himself.
Not for the headlines. For the honour.
And so here we are.
The king has laid down his sword. The whites are folded. The Crown is intact. But the fire burns elsewhere now.
It is not a happy moment. But it is a proud one.
Because every goodbye is also an invitation.
To reflect.
To remember.
To reimagine.
We will miss the roar.
The stare. The madness.
But more than that, we will miss what he made us feel.
Alive.
For me, Virat Kohli is not just exiting a format today. He is exiting a chapter he himself wrote, line by glorious line, with sweat as ink and willpower as punctuation. He gave us moments. But more than that, he gave us a mindset.
Test cricket would go on to find another hero, but it will never find another Kohli.
And so, let us rise. Not in mourning, but in gratitude.
Let us say express our gratitude in whatever way we can.
A mock celebration like him in the drawing room alone.
An imitation of the fist pump.
A muted roar in the bathroom mirror.
A message on a fan group.
A tweet.
A tear.
Thank you, Virat. For making us believe.
Thank you for being the flame in a game too often chilled by numbers.
Thank you for turning ambition into architecture, and sweat into scripture.
Thank you for not merely playing the game as it was.
But for rewriting it, stroke by stroke, run by run.
Indian cricket will not just remember you.
It will carry your fire in its bloodstream.