With just 24 hours to go for yet another India-New Zealand semi-final, it is time to go back to a conversation I had with Virat Kohli sometime after India had lost the World Cup semi-final in Manchester in July 2019. He had been dismissed for one by an incoming Trent Boult delivery, a ball that television replays showed was clipping the top of the stump. The decision could have gone either way, and it was unfortunate for Kohli and India that the umpire’s dreaded finger had gone up.
“Honestly, when we went to the World Cup, I had this very strong feeling in my heart that the team would need me in some game and it would be a chase, and I swear I had this feeling so strong that I am going to come not out at the end of the game and take India through that rough phase,” he told me. “And I really felt strongly that was the game. When I walked out to bat, I knew this is the game, but maybe that was my ego talking because how can you predict something like that? You can only have a strong feeling, or maybe it was a strong desire of mine. But it did not turn out that way. My dismissal was really disappointing for me. This wasn’t because I hadn’t scored. It was because I had failed to contribute to the team and we had lost a match that we should have won.”
Kohli, who by his own admission hates losing, had a rather interesting take on dealing with failure. “It is not easy,” he said. “If you ask me if I get affected by failure, I do. Everyone does. I am human at the end of the day. It is difficult to process failure on the big stage. But you have to understand that I totally believe in the fact that what’s meant for you will happen. Success and failure are a part of everything that we do in life. Whether it is sport or daily life, it is the truth of life and you need to be able to accept both with grace. That’s the thing I have learnt. You can’t say I am the king of the world when you succeed, or we are invincible now, and when you fail, beat yourself down so much that you can’t wake up again. In fact, failure is a great way to analyse what went wrong and to improve on those things. Cricket is all about that. Life is all about that. Making a mistake and having the courage and clarity to say, ‘Ok, I have made a mistake’, is what is most important. I am not going to be egoistic about it. Rather, I will rectify the mistake and walk forward.”
While I was listening to Kohli during the interview mentioned above, my sub-conscious was also trying to notice his body movements. There was a silent resoluteness about him when he spoke about the World Cup defeat. Make no mistake, it still hurts him. A proud sportsman, Kohli is determined and committed to winning a world title, and will leave no stone unturned over the next five days. With a bowling attack that can now win India games anywhere in the world, he knows this team has the ammunition to mount a real challenge for the title on home ground. And the key to that consistency is the fitness he has now made second nature for himself and for most of his teammates. For him, it is a mission. “Soon after I made fitness a mission, I could sense the changes and realised this was the way forward,” he said. “I could bat for longer periods and field with intensity without getting tired. As high-performance sportsmen and women, this is the global fitness standard that we needed to aspire to.”
Sport always gives you a second chance. In Melbourne last year, Kohli used it to play perhaps the best shot ever seen in Twenty20 cricket history. Under pressure, it was a stroke of real genius. And by doing so, he scripted an Indian win that generations will talk about.
This semi-final is yet another opportunity. He has 594 runs to his name already this World Cup. That includes two hundreds touched by pure genius. But then, he will know the job isn’t done yet, and will be keen to go out in Mumbai and make amends for 2019. As Abhinav Bindra says, “Yes, there will be pressure. It will hurt you. But it won’t kill you. And it will also go away”. No one knows this more than Kohli. He will surely try and live in the present, soak up the pressure and try and fulfil his dream of taking India over the line. As cricket’s most-loved devotee, there is every reason to believe he can.