Kohli takes fresh guard, a stellar career enters a new phase 

Come Friday, the resplendent star will join the elite club of the Indian cricketers’ 100-Test club

BENGALURU

To play a 100 Test matches is to become a cricketer apart. It’s a lifetime’s worth of work, perseverance, dedication and sacrifice compressed within a small window of a decade and a little more.

After all, only 11 Indians have ever reached that milestone. On Friday, Virat Kohli is set to become the 12th when India takes on Sri Lanka in the first Test at the IS Bindra PCA Stadium in Mohali.

Through this journey, Kohli has been a resplendent star, unscathed by the relentlessness required to sustain epoch-conquering dominance. Even the most well-toned of bodies are subject to time, but Kohli, with his explosive athleticism still intact, has given out the vibes of a transcendent, unchanging champion.

Ever since he made his mark in a floundering Indian batting order in the early years of the last decade, he has been the nation’s batting totem pole, a truly great all-format batter on whose willow rested the country’s hopes and cricketing pride.

And for a considerable period, he was the captain too, in internationals and the IPL, expending immense mental energy in trying to shape the side to match his self-assurance and drive.

It is this image that the astute former English captain Mike Brearley captured in his book On Cricket. “There are four great Indian batsmen, all imbued with what one might call ‘Indianness’,” he wrote. “They represent, one might say, colonial India (Ranji), Independent India (Pataudi), commercially booming India (Tendulkar), and an India that aims at greatness in all spheres (Kohli).”