Overall: 27,975 runs at 52.58 ave
For me, the way Virat plays the game is what made me realise he is a great; not really the numbers or the stats. To this day, his biggest attribute is his character and the way he plays.
The previous generation of Indian cricketers wasn’t quite the same. Yes, they were obviously phenomenally talented. I’m talking about the Sachin Tendulkar era and prior to that. But they didn’t really have that same kind of in-your-face way of playing.
I feel that is Virat’s biggest contribution to Indian cricket: just really changing the mindset and teaching his peers that being in the face of the opposition can have a big impact on the game. Very early on, playing against him, I just saw this fierce competitor with this character of not stepping back against anything or anyone. And to this day that’s what I admire most about him.
He brought similar strengths to his batting, too. I can talk about his cover-drives and his straight-drives and the way he flicks the ball, against spinners especially, over that midwicket area. That’s one of my favorite shots when he really gets those wrists going. But more than the technique and the shots, it’s the way he approaches an innings that stands out to me, the way he sends that message across to the opposition. You can see it in the way he walks out to bat, and I actually did a coaching video recently (yet to be published) for my YouTube channel, where I speak about body language. It’s very similar to playing card games, where you can trick the opposition or send a message by just the way that you sit there, the way you control your body language.
That, to me, is key – the way he just sends a message to the opposition: I’m here to play today, it’s war out here, I’m not your friend, and if you don’t get me out very quickly, I’m here to win the game for my country.
With him, it’s more than just playing a game of cricket. Those are the kind of stakes that he plays for, which the previous generation was maybe not prepared to do. Virat sort of pulled his whole team alongside him and said, listen, we are representing our country.
It almost always feels like it is personal for him. He’s always willing to pick a fight. No one can step into his space. It’s his time out there, and it almost feels like you’re part of the Virat movie when you’re playing against him. That can be intimidating; it’s not nice to play against. It affects the bowler’s performance sometimes, where they almost get too emotionally involved and want to get him out too much and end up playing to his script.
One example of that could be the Jo’burg Test in 2018, which India won. I remember dropping Virat at slip. He scored runs in both innings in a low-scoring match on a tricky pitch. That showed how his character comes through in trying situations. It’s something you can’t buy in a supermarket, right?
It was dangerous out there. I know Dean Elgar took a lot of blows off Jasprit Bumrah, and we all raised our eyebrows, wondering if the pitch was safe to play on. But Virat saw it as an opportunity against all the odds to go out there and show his team-mates it could be done. It’s just a mindset: you might take one or two on the body, but if your mind is in the right place, then you can achieve greatness. And that’s the influence he had on his team-mates
Such confidence usually comes from a strong defensive game. Virat has one of the most beautiful set-ups in the world. Where he gets himself into trouble sometimes is when he starts wanting to go and starts feeling at some balls outside off where he probably shouldn’t. But when you bowl at the stumps, there’s not many better in the world to have ever played the game.
The secret with his defence is, there’s energy in it. Very few players manage that, where even a front-foot defensive shot almost looks like it’s an event. It feels like, whoa, there was a lot of intensity and energy in that!
Because it’s not just defending the ball, it’s that late blade coming through. It’s very compact. And he makes eye contact immediately with the bowler, almost going, look, there’s no way through here. He’ll look around, look at the wicketkeeper. Does anyone want to say anything to me? So it’s this whole event that takes place in one defensive shot.
I remember Virat spoke about his defence to Rahul Dravid after breaking his century drought (against Australia in Ahmedabad in 2023). He said that his defence is his strength. I would go further and say that it’s his strength in ODIs and T20s as well. You can send a message not necessarily by the way you hit a six in T20s but by the way you take a single to long-on, and in ODIs with that new ball, just by playing one or two down to third man. You get a single but your chest is out and you send a message: I’m here today. Just the way you do that, the opposition sometimes go: oh my goodness, this is going to be a long day.
He has dealt with the pressure of expectations, like many do at this level. At a young age, I remember getting a feeling of nausea before tennis matches, getting sick sometimes, with my mom having to stop the car on the side of the road. That was because of the expectation I put on myself, expecting to win, really making the result almost more important than anything else. And I think Virat realised the secret is to embrace the challenge rather than make the result your whole universe.
I’m here, hear me roar•AFP/Getty Images
A lot of books have been written about not putting too much emphasis on the result but focusing on the process. Roger Federer is a good example of someone who had the ability to put the result aside. The hardest part of that is sleeping the night before a match. The game itself, when you are out there in the middle, you sort of immediately snap into that process because of years and years of exercise and experience, but it really takes a strong mind to go out there and say, listen, now it’s just the match.
For Virat, it’s on a whole different scale – there’s about a billion followers against maybe 40 million in South Africa. But if you have the ability, you either allow that into your system or you acknowledge it, embrace it, and then almost try and use that energy in the space of the match day. That is what he has been able to control.
It doesn’t mean it doesn’t wear him down. It wears every player down. I can very clearly relate to that. The back end of my career, the last three to five years, not playing as much international cricket anymore, but still, every time I walked out in the IPL or any match, people expected me to break a world record and win the match, do something incredible. That can wear you down – though not so much in the middle, as I said.
You need to find a method to counter that. And one way is to have a decent balance away from the game. Virat’s done that exceptionally well with his family these days. A lot of things have changed in his life and he’s made a conscious decision that no matter what the people say or think, or how hard they come at him, he’s decided that his priorities have changed. This is what is most important to me, and this is how I’m going to balance it out. I will still give time to cricket, to ultimately chase my dreams, but there are things to get away from.
I very often refer to going to war in cricket. You can’t do that alone or have a few players giving it their all and the rest don’t pitch in. Sometimes it’s scary out there. You face incredible pace in Mitchell Johnson, Mitchell Starc, Dale Steyn, Kagiso Rabada – the list goes on. There are some fierce bowlers out there. You need to have a team that comes around you and says, listen, we are in this together, we are not going to let individuals suffer out here, we are going to do this thing together. That’s the kind of belief that he’s instilled in Indian cricket, and that’s his biggest compliment.
Also, from a fan’s point of view, he just brought the whole of India together. And it’s incredible. If you think about it, it’s a piece of willow and a leather ball that you hit around. But doing something that you love at such a high level, with such intensity, just brings people together and makes them enjoy life. It’s almost bigger than cricket.
As told to Nagraj Gollapudi
Stats are for the 2000-2025 period
Allrounder AB de Villiers played 420 internationals for South Africa between 2004 and 2018, 37 of them against India sides featuring Virat Kohli