The next gen superstar

18^th December 2006 , a certain batsman started his slow walk back after scoring a chanceless 90 . He was on 40 at the close of play on the previous day with his team staring at a follow on with the last recognized pair in the middle

Not many thought the guy would be able to report at the dressing room that morning , let alone bat. Why ? the lad lost his father , Prem , at 3 am that morning . But surprisingly he came to the stadium that morning . He was persuaded by his teammates and coach to return home , but the guy denied , ‘ I want to bat ‘ , he said.

He was involved a match saving partnership with Puneet Bist ( scored 156) and saw his side through to safety. He looked focus and kept telling his partner  ‘ stay at the wicket ‘.

Mike Singletary, a legendary American Football player and coach, once said, "Do
you know what my favourite part of the game is? The opportunity to play". Fortunately , Kohli got his , quite early in his career , and whats noteworthy is he grabbed them with both hands . Kohli , the batsman is all about – hard work , work ethics . Never gives up , neither does he give away an inch to the opposition . There hasn’t been an occasion where he has given away his wicket to an undeserving delivery .

I have not been as atingled by a batsman for a long time. For all the ball-munching arête of Trott and Bell or the occasional audacity of Morgan and KP, the current England team does not simultaneously take the breath away and have you purring in acknowledgement of cricketing correctness. For all the monumental batting feats of Ponting, Hussey and Watson, Kallis, de Villiers and Amla, none are particularly easy on the eye. Same goes for the best of Pakistan, New Zealand and West Indies. Oh, and Tamim too.

Then there’s India, that vast nation of iron-wristed batsmen. In terms of purity of stroke and easy elegance, Ajinkya Rahane is close, but not quite Kohli’s equal (there is the chance, of course that this could be the whole throbbing spectacle distorting my perspective and usually impeccable judgment). Dravid, Laxman, Sehwag – great players all, but none of them are so completely classical as is the 22-year-old from Delhi (Laxman and Sehwag are not big movers of their feet, while the King of Method, Dravid, is often bailed out by lightening hands and defensive instincts). So it is probably not since Lara and Sachin that I have been as turned on by a level of batsmanship that more or less says to the bowler: “whatever you have, it’s probably not enough.”

Talking of quick hands, Kohli wields his willow like a ping-pong paddle, bringing the blade through an extraordinarily pure arc, too, whether tucking it into the legside, clipping it wide of mid-on or playing his signature stroke: the lofted extra-cover drive, hands accelerating up through the hitting area like a golfer. This shot is not played inside-out, with fade, as it is for so many who hit the ball well in that area, for Kohli simply lasers it to his intended target (more or less to the exact seat number) and can also hit the ball bolt straight down the ground. Actually, it is often his footwork that determines where the ball goes, the hitting arc dictated by body alignment.

But all this technical talk is already to take some magic away, to render it matter of fact, scientific, when it is clearly the work of an artist, a genius. Yes, he has those two founding principles of all the great players – balance and picking up length – but what I marvel at in Kohli is his manipulation of the field, the physical (balance) and perceptual (length-judging) feeding into the cognitive act of shot selection, then back into the physical (the motor system). The shot selection hasn’t always been flawless in this tournament, but such is life in the overheated world of Twenty20. However, just watch how he plays the ball on the offside, steering the ball either side of the backward point, gliding it fine of third man, forcing the offside configuration to move clockwise in synch then drilling the ball over extra-cover (or, utterly fearlessly, straight over long off).

To grasp the jack-in-the-box Kohli’s sheer enthusiasm for the game, you only have to observe him sat in the dugout, up and down, touching colleagues, chatting, chirping, living and breathing every single ball. You’ll often find him alongside his coach, Anil Kumble, and a cynic might be tempted to surmise that he was a teacher’s pet. But that hypothesis doesn’t stack up: there is no question of him needing to creep in order to advance up some notional pecking order; alongside Gayle, Dilshan and skipper Vettori, he’s clearly at the top of the RCB food chain, frequently consulted by his skipper on bowling changes. You only need to see how he speaks to such veterans as Mohammad Kaif to realize he exudes seniority, an authority deriving from both charisma and on-field performance. And he takes responsibility, the hallmark of any leader.

In fact, with India having been utterly demolished in England this summer, it would make sense for Duncan Fletcher – if indeed he is able to make such a decision – to install Kohli in the Test team without further ado, and to make him vice-captain to Dhoni. This will not compensate for the lack of bowling penetration, the discovery of which remains India and Fletcher’s greatest immediate challenge, but it will ensure there is no apathy on the field. And after the cricket they played here, at times, that can only be a good thing.