Can Virat Kohli find his mojo against New Zealand at his RCB home base in Bangalore ahead of Australia series?

After get-the-eye-in defensive blocks in the nets, he swapped his violin for a bass guitar. He drilled Akash Deep down the ground so powerful that it broke the flaky leg of a plastic chair. The remaining pack were hurriedly dragged away.

He often essays two varieties of the straight drive, one when he eases into the shot, a punch rather than a drive. The other type is when he whips it with the flex of his bottom hand, a shot he unfurls when he is in a commanding mood. Akash Deep retorted with an away-swinger that beat his outside edge when driving. The next ball was similar in length, but was cover-driven regally and sneaked underneath the nets to the main square.

A crew of impressionable youngsters lined up at the spin nets for a moment that could make their day, week, month or perhaps the rest of their life. A leg-break that beat Kohli, or the arm-ball he edged onto his pad. Instead, their souvenir balls would only tell the pain it felt from the sweet-spot of Kohli’s willow.

India’s Virat Kohli plays a shot on the fifth and final day of the second cricket test match between Bangladesh and India in Kanpur, India, Tuesday, October 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)

To nearly every ball, he stepped out. Often he clumped them over midwicket, the clank of the ball hitting the tin roof scattering the falcons into a stratospheric refuge. Most glorious was a straight six on the back-foot off a left-arm-spinner who erred on the shorter side. The groundsmen, sprawled behind the nets watching Kohli, were putting in ball-boy shifts, hauling out the ball from distant corners of the stands.

Just then, a support staff member told Kohli his time was up. He grudgingly came off. But he spotted an unoccupied slot in the nets on the opposite side of the ground and rushed before someone else barged in.

Of late, the majestic past has only flashed and flickered. The 76 in Centurion was a mini-classic on a minefield, with resonance to Sachin Tendulkar’s 79 not out in Lahli. The 46 in Cape Town too was an epic in the making. But sometime sooner, Kohli as well as his team would wish he revived his gluttonous century-making ways. Not least before the five-Test series to Australia. The three Tests against New Zealand present an ideal opportunity to reach the Antipodean shores with seething confidence. The bowling line-up has more spunk than Bangladesh, the three grounds usually offer sufficient bounce, and New Zealand possess a group of crafty seamers who could test and tease him, and equip him for the Australia duel. Though India had not been overdependent on Kohli for a while, he is still India’s batting metronome, his wicket akin to a quarter of the battle won.

It’s thus understandable that the critics have again begun to sharpen their knives at him. Head coach Gautam Gambhir, though, quashes them. “My thoughts about Virat have always been clear, that he is a world-class cricketer. He has performed for such a long period of time, and he is as hungry as when he made his debut,” he says.

The hunger was evident in the practise session, when Kohli couldn’t keep off the nets, even after most of his colleagues had packed up. When he was not batting in the nets, he was shadow-batting beside the nets. So much so that as the evening receded and the sun made a brief appearance, he was running a batting clinic, with a horde of youngsters studying every movement of his, be it him working on his bat-swing, or fidgeting with the grip, or when he walked back with a content smile, like an emperor in his monarch gliding along a space he feels as intimate as home.