What I would love to learn from Virat Kohli

First thing you notice of this man is that if he doesn’t like something, he will swear at it. Regardless of the fact that camera may be focusing at him or not.

I was having a dinner with a cricketer friend of mine and he told me that Virat will cross the heights that Sachin has set for cricketing world. Being an ardent fan of Sachin, I told him that it was too early to say that with any confidence. We did not argue the matter further on statistics and facts, but a striking similarity between the two crossed my mind.

Apart from the cricketing abilities, both of them have something else in similar. Both of them had bounced back even after facing one of the most severe blows of life, death of their fathers. While Sachin’s story of scoring a hundred in the 1999 world cup soon after he returned from performing the last rites of his father is well known to the world. Little is known about Virat’s story.

He was playing for delhi when he got a news of his father’s death. And despite having been up for the most part of night, he came to ground next morning after performing the last rites. His innings of 90 runs helped his side saving a game against Karnataka.

It is correct that the stage at which both were playing were different, they may have been of different ages when the tragedy hit them, however what is common is that even in the toughest of the time both kept their commitment to cricket intact.   

I often wonder if we can keep the same level of commitment to whatever work that we are doing or not. Or should we do only that work for which we can keep this level of commitment? The answer to this question lies in the first lines of this piece.

Unless we have the courage to swear at things we dislike, we have the courage to say no, we have the courage to express the dislike, we have the guts to reject, we will perhaps never be able to find or search what we really like or work towards changing those that we dislike or despise.

I may not learn any style, looks, cricketing skills from him, but I certainly wish to learn this one quality from Virat Kohli. J