Tuesday 21st Jan, 2025
Polite to a fault in his own way, almost always politically correct in answering tricky questions, Kohli’s natural anger and aggression manifests itself in the cool, calm and almost calculating manner for the best part. When asked how he felt about sweeping an injury-hit, inexperienced and frankly, inadequate Sri Lankan team 3-0, inside of 11 playing days, Kohli affected bemusement. “Feeling happy …” he trailed off.
Well, of course he was happy, but did emerging victorious in a no-contest feel any different from fighting back from 0-1 down against Australia where there was bitterness off the field and intensity on it? “No, because if you differentiate your level of motivation and intensity according to oppositions, then you’re judging oppositions differently.
You know you won’t see reckless cricket regardless of who we are playing. We want to consolidate every situation, we want to make sure that we’re correcting things along the journey and that’s the mindset we want to take forward,” said Kohli, adding that doing anything else would be “disrespecting the sport.” As professional sportsmen this is understandable. Who wants to work hard for returns when you can pick off the low-hanging fruit instead? To prepare and execute in the same manner against all opposition is exactly the kind of ruthlessness champions need, but surely, it is only human to value the hard-fought more than what comes easiest?