Coming around to Kohli

In the last year and a half, I have, whenever I’ve found the opportunity, lamented the departure of the previous generation of Indian cricketers, and my inability to relate to the current crop of players. The definition of what is ‘cool’ in the sport had changed, and Virat Kohli embodied the new, brash and angry face of cricket; a face that I was not able to get on board with. A couple of seasons down the line, I have to admit a grudging admiration for Virat Kohli.

For those of us who grew up on Tendulkar, Dravid and Kumble, Kohli is not our kind of cricketer. He has neither Tendulkar’s grace, nor Dravid’s humility. He is intense and driven, but unlike Dravid and Kumble who were intense in a studious, self-assessing fashion, he is intense in the way you expect people with anger management issues to be. In that sense, there is more of a young Ponting in Kohli than his Indian predecessors. He has a cover drive as imperious as Dravid’s was ornate, or Tendulkar’s was textbook. His game off the pads, while not as pretty as Laxman’s, is equally, if not more effective. When Kohli bats, there is little to fault him, but even of his generation he is not the best talent. Sharma is better to watch, Rahane looks tighter in defense and strokeplay, and Pujara is temperamentally sounder. Yet in past couple of years, Kohli has managed to eclipse all of them by a long stretch.

He is the best one day batsman going around, even better, I daresay, than A B de Villiers. In the last twenty five years or so, we have had two kinds of one day batsmen who have been called great. The first kind were those in the Gilchrist/Sehwag mould. They usually opened, and gave their teams explosive starts. Jayasuriya started this trend, and openers across teams picked up on it. Then there were those in the Yuvraj Singh mould, the great finishers. Michael Bevan was possibly the first great of this kind, and M S Dhoni may be the finest exponent of this skill that we have seen so far. There have, of course, been those who could do both. Tendulkar, Ganguly, Sangakkara, Ponting could all do it; Inzamam was among the best. Kohli has, in last few couple of years, done it more consistently and better than anyone else. He has mastered the art of putting together the perfectly paced innings—he has no obvious weakness in the one-day game; scores at a brisk rate; rotates strike well; his strokeplay has power but is relatively risk-free; and he makes the most of it once he gets going, like great batsmen do. What makes Kohli not just a very good player but a truly dangerous one, is his ability of get into a space where both he and the opposition feel he can do no wrong. And, he has managed to do this with an alarming regularity. This is a skill which goes beyond mere cricketing ability. It has to do with the kind of self-belief most of us can only marvel at.

While Kohli has been an exceptional one day player for some time, he has found the going in test cricket tougher. Perhaps as a result of that, as a spectator, I have found more joy in Kohli’s stint in test cricket than I have in one-day internationals. With so much cricket being played, what gives the game and its players memorability are the narratives woven around them. The story of Virat Kohli—ODI champion—overcoming his initial struggles and growing into test cricket is a more compelling one. After a disappointing debut in West Indies in 2011, he was dropped for a few tests. But since his maiden hundred in Adelaide last time India toured Australia, he has looked better with every tour, barring the terrible time he had against James Anderson in England this year. His century in South Africa in 2013 was a comfort for those of us very aware of the tour being India’s first without Tendulkar in over two decades. For once, Kohli’s celebration on reaching the milestone had more joy than anger. Even his struggles against the moving ball in England this summer, while not pretty to watch, may prove to be a blessing in disguise. Test cricket is meant to be hard and long. The truest test of character is in overcoming adversity and bouncing back from failures. The twin centuries in Adelaide last week were largely chanceless knocks where Kohli played at a plane altogether different from those around him. The responsibility of captaincy seemed to inspire him to produce something special, and he relished every challenge thrown at him by the Australians.

The churlishness that marked him when he was younger seems to be on a tighter leash now. His send off to Chris Rogers in the last test was ugly and, in the context of the game, childish; but such incidents are far and few in between these days. What one liked at the end of this match was his readiness to give credit to the other team where it was due. His press statements are now almost charmingly candid, even self deprecating at times, as evidenced by a most amused Dravid interviewing him after the Adelaide test. As future captain, it is likely he will cross the line once in a while, and will never have the statesmanlike bearing of a Kumble or Steve Waugh. What he has, though, is the air of a man who means business. The chilling stare which his partner receives when Kohli is at the receiving end of a mix up while running between the wickets is now well documented. The aura of Kohli has now successfully grown from that of a brat to one who exudes danger. Most of all, Kohli brings the promise of combative cricket, which raises anticipation in the hearts of those who have followed one dismal overseas tour after another in the last three years.

Building a library

Growing up away from home and in residential schools and colleges, one of the things I missed the most was having my own room and bookshelf. Even in law school, while I had a healthy collection of books, there was never enough space to keep them together.

Therefore, I was very keen on having a proper bookshelf once I got my own place.  But the process of getting the ideal bookshelf is not quite a simple as one may think. The kind of bookshelf I want wouldn't fit in the elevator or through the front door. I haven’t come across a design for a bookshelf that can be dismantled that I like yet. My house, a rented two bedroom, came fitted with a large living room cabinet. Seeing as we did not intend to get a television and clearly, the pride of place in any house we lived in should rightfully belong to our books, we converted this cabinet into a bookshelf. This poses a bit of a problem as there is a large space for a television which goes completely wasted. Currently, we have a Christmas tree made of post-its adorning it. Then, there is long rack made of glass, the kind people reserve for their trophies. All the trophies, the very few that we do have, sit in our respective parents’ homes. But the glass shelf means we can only keep judiciously selected books that do not threaten to bring it down. 

Nevertheless, there it is, my first proper bookshelf, a make do one, shared and much fussed over. Sharing a bookshelf can be tricky. What books should sit together is a game of extensive deliberations and even after we come to a decision, constant second guessing. Add to that, the fact that it is a constantly growing collection under the shared belief that at least one tenth of the money one makes must be spent on books. Therefore, every couple of months, we do something we call the Great Reorganisation. We decide what books should continue to be displayed on the cabinet and what should be relegated to the cupboards in our rooms. 

The Vikram Seths and Amitav Ghoshs, our favorite Indian writers whose books we own numerous copies of, have claimed a right to the prime real estate locations, occupying prominent shelves, at least for now. Pooja’s complete collection of the Linguistic Survey of India, the only one ever done, stay together as an imposing presence, red hard bound books in seventeen volumes. Then there also some element of mixing and matching. Some subjects flow thematically into the other while others are bound more by contrast than familiarity. As language enthusiasts, we have literary history, etymology books and Pooja’s collection of books of typography displayed together. It took us some time to figure out the sequence in which we wants the books to sit, and we eventually settled on order of evolutionary progression with typography books (letters) at the top, followed by etymology (words) and finally, literary history (literature). This sense of logic is not consistently adhered to as Gender Studies books share a shelf with Men’s Fashion, the Asimovs sit next to British Humor, and Science and Cookbooks reside together. 

What amazes me more and more is how differently you think of your books, depending on the way they are arranged in your bookshelves. In the earlier arrangements, Ram Guha’s books used to sit together as part of the India collection, but now lies distributed across Sports, History and Politics. An MC Escher sits comfortably in Design, Science or simply, large hard bound books. Fritjof Capra’s Tao of Physics  and The Introduction of Numbers have moved from Philosophy to Math and Science in the last reorganisation. This moving around of books based on a semblance of logic often dictated by whims and fancies ( “Do we have enough books to have a Science shelf? A Science shelf would be cool.”) often changes how you think of your books, in what order you read them and what books you buy next in the desire to fill up or build a shelf. 

For some time now, Pooja has been trying to pitch the idea of arranging the bookshelf by the color of books as an interesting experiment. While the idea sounded abominable to me in the beginning, it has gradually begun to grow on me. A more common and less bizarre way to arrange the books would be chronologically. Anne Fadiman argues if you do have books from across centuries, it will “allow [you] to watch the broad sweep of literature unfold before [your] very eyes.” Another arrangement I read about somewhere spoke of the idea of arranging the bookshelf based on what writers you felt would get along with each other, the kind of delightfully wasteful intellectual exercise that it sounds both tempting and daunting.