From ‘Chiku’ to ‘King’: How Virat Kohli forced Jane-Z to fall in love with Test cricket

Virat Kohli entered the Indian drawing room as a superior “West Delhi Boy”, grown on his fans like a never ending love story with his immense passion and finally called time on his career in whites, when his army of fans was craving for ‘one final dance’. Tour to Australia where he scored only 91 runs in Perth after his second innings.

Nevertheless, Indian cricket was needed in England, but it seems, more than the body, the mind had beaten enough to live throughout his life and did not want to go through that harshness for another five test series. Testing devotee Virat Kohli decided to wave the white flag.

King Kohli from Chiku to Virat

For his seniors, Virat for his contemporaries and now ‘Bhaiya’ being ‘Chiku’ for Juniors, ‘Raja Kohli’ traveled a fair distance and experienced disappointment in the joy and uniform measurement of the higher.

An 18 -year -old Kohli was, who held the last rites of his father Prem Kohli in 2006, scored 90 runs to save Delhi from follows and directly turned to the crematorium from an empty Feroz Shah Kotla.

And then in 2025, 36 -year -old global superstar Kohli was cast by one of the about 20,000 fans known by the small known railway middle pace Himgashu Sangwan, who came to the Ranji Trophy ground, to see his hero’s bat, one of the last time in the whites against a bright red SG ball.

In the interim 18 years, he scored hundreds of those 30 Tests and increased rapidly with his following his fans as he was ‘Hemelin’s Pied Piper’.

Honest for your craft

Kohli played cricket for all the exact reasons and while the installation will be again with “back-stories” whether there was a forth or shock, no one should have any doubt that Kohli has given full time to his test.

He will still be seen in Odis, a format where he has been peerless for a decade and a half, but Kohli, Kohli, until Kovid -19 hit our lives, Kohli was a separate animal.

But at a time when an average Indian fan focuses as an Instagram reel, Kohli fell in love with Millennials and Generation Z with Test cricket, which manages to draw his attention to the Glitzi Indian Premier League.

Someone can call it Kohli Fandam and India’s trend a cricket star-living country, but if he brought a footfall to the stand, will anyone mind? His test form was still over a few years and the last average of 46.85 does not actually shout greatness. Kohli will know that more than someone else.

He needed another 770 runs to complete the 10,000 Test runs, which is still a sacred grave for the batsmen in the longest format.

His contemporary, England’s Joe Root is scoring a few runs in the tests to complete 13,000 runs, while Steve Smith has also crossed 10,000 points. Ken Williamson needs 724 runs and will definitely complete the milestone as he is still in love with New Zealand’s white.

Those years of frantic stability

But between 2014 and 2019, Kohli was a test player who, with the morality of his work, gave an assurance to the cover drive and dying, covering those with his work morality.

Sachin Tendulkar was a perfectist, but Kohli’s aura was a non-non-realisticist.

He had a defensive game, but believed in crime. Tendulkar worked on his mistakes and Kohli worked around his fragmentation. to each his own.

All this changed after a terrible 2014 tour in England when James Anderson set the most difficult question paper of his career. The length delivery was thrown away or slightly back which was thrown away and Kohli could not cross the ‘English channel’.

But a few months after that defeat, when he rolled his wrist and pulled Mitchell Johnson at Adelaide Oval after being hit on the helmet, someone knew that something special had come to the fore. In Australia, four hundreds and Kohli’s legend did their speed truck on the highway for greatness.

In 2018, he scored 593 runs to win the 2014 demons, returned to England.

He became a bench mark for fitness and also became a captain who wanted to win the Test at all costs.

He was very different as a captain, was not shy to celebrate the animated and make a speed quartet (Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav) that could scare any line-up in the cricket stratosphere.

Last of purists

Kohli loved Test cricket and Test cricket loved him back. It was a symbiotic relationship. He grew up in an era, in which Tendulkar was a mega star and playing Test cricket with distance was the last badge of honor.

His issues were-the questions outside the stump remained, he could never sweep spinners like Tendulkar or Rohit Sharma, but Kohli was a player who fully knew about his strength and knew how to maximize him. And he did so that he with Aplomb.

Since cricket is a reflection of society and T20 is a mirror, Kohli will probably remain the last megastar of the pure form of the game.

This is not likely to change soon.

(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is published by a syndicated feed.)