From 'Cheeku' To 'King': How Virat Kohli Forced Gen-Z To Fall In Love With Test Cricket

NDTV

12-05-2025

Virat Kohli entered Indian drawing rooms as a quintessential "West Delhi boy'', grew on his fans like a never-ending love story with his boundless passion and finally called time on his career in whites when his legion of admirers yearned for 'One Last Dance'. In his mind, he knew that although "it is not easy", it did "feel right". The question to be asked is when exactly did Kohli get this feeling?. Perhaps it was after a torrid tour of Australia where he scored only 91 runs after his second innings century in Perth. Swing and bounce together made life difficult and even for the eternal optimists, a second coming looked distant.
Yet, Indian cricket needed him in England but it seems, the mind, more than the body, had taken enough battering to last a lifetime and he didn't want to go through that rigour for another five Test series. Virat Kohli, the Test devotee, had decided to wave the white flag.
From Cheeku to Virat to King Kohli
From being the chubby 'Cheeku' for his seniors, Virat for his contemporaries and now 'Bhaiyya' to the juniors, 'King Kohli' did traverse a fair distance and experienced joys of highs and the despair of lows in equal measure.
There was an 18-year-old Kohli, who in 2006, put his father Prem Kohli's last rites on hold, scored 90 to save Delhi from follow on and headed straight to the crematorium from an empty Feroz Shah Kotla.
And then in 2025, 36-year-old global superstar Kohli was castled by a little known Railways medium pacer Himagshu Sangwan in-front of nearly 20,000 fans, who had come to the Ranji Trophy ground, to watch their hero bat, one last time in whites against a shiny red SG ball.
In the interim 18 years, he scored those 30 Test hundreds and his following grew exponentially with his fans looking up to him as if he was the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin'.
Honest to his Craft
Kohli played cricket for all the right reasons and while the establishment will be replete with "back-stories" about whether there was a nudge or push, no one should have any doubts that Kohli has timed his Test adieu perfectly.
He will still be seen in ODIs, a format where he has been peerless for a decade and a half but Kohli, the Test cricketer till COVID-19 hit our lives, was a different beast.
But in times when attention span of an average Indian fan is as brief as an instagram reel, Kohli made the millennials and Generation Z fall in love with Test cricket, managing to draw their attention away from the glitzy Indian Premier League.
One could call it Kohli fandom and India's propensity to be a cricket star-loving country but if that brought footfall in the stands, would anyone mind? His Test form was on the wane for some years now and that final average of 46.85 doesn't really scream greatness. Kohli would know that more than anyone else.
He needed another 770 runs to complete 10,000 Test runs, which is still a holy grail for batters in the longest format.
His contemporaries, Joe Root of England is few runs short of completing 13,000 runs in Tests while Steve Smith has also crossed the 10,000 mark. Kane Williamson needs 724 runs and he will certainly complete the milestone as he is still in love with New Zealand whites.
Those Years of Manic Consistency
But Kohli between 2014 to 2019 was a Test player, who personified adrenaline rush, with his work ethic, those rasping cover drives and an assured front-foot stride to live and die for.
Sachin Tendulkar was a perfectionist but Kohli's aura was in being a non-conformist.
He had the defensive game but believed in offence. Tendulkar worked on his mistakes and Kohli worked around his frailties. To each his own.
It all changed after a horrendous 2014 tour of England when James Anderson set the toughest question paper of his career. Full or slightly back of the length deliveries that swung away were thrown at him and Kohli couldn't cross the 'English Channel'.
But few months after that debacle, when he rolled his wrists and pulled Mitchell Johnson at the Adelaide Oval after being hit on the helmet, one knew that something special was unfolding. Four hundreds in Australia and the legend of Kohli had his speed truck on Highway to greatness.
In 2018, he came back to England scoring 593 runs to conquer the demons of 2014.
He became a bench mark for fitness and also became a captain, who wanted to win away Tests at all costs.
He was very different as a captain, not shy of celebrating animatedly and forming a pace quartet (Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav) that could intimidate any line-up across the cricketing stratosphere.
Last of the 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 the mega star and playing Test cricket with distinction was the ultimate badge of honour.
He had his issues -- the questions outside the off-stump remained, he could never sweep spinners like Tendulkar or Rohit Sharma but Kohli was one player acutely aware of his strengths and knew how to maximise them. And he did that with aplomb.
Since cricket is a reflection of society and T20 is the mirror, Kohli will perhaps remain the last megastar of the game's purest form.
It is not likely to change anytime soon.