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A nostalgic cricket lover, jaded by T20 excess and politics, finds renewed passion in Virat Kohli’s flawless 139* that brings him close to 15,000 ODI runs. The article revisits Kohli’s greatest innings and turbulent years, from criticism to stepping away from captaincy and formats, concluding that he now plays in a realm where records fade and his enduring greatness defines an era.
I consider myself a relapsed cricket fan. In recent years, the politicisation and the oversaturation of Indian cricket with seemingly endless T20I matches have soured this great game for me. I miss the anticipation of an India-Pakistan bilateral series (remember those?) and the day-long rush of watching a Sunday ODI. While ICC tournaments like the Champions League and World Cup fixtures still manage to pull me in, I have mostly outgrown my cricketmania. But every once in a while, something magical happens, and I am eleven once again — madly in love with cricket. Virat Kohli's unbeaten 139 against West Indies off 88 balls at Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday was one such innings.
I am at the tail end of my twenties now — which is another way of saying I will be 30 in less than a year. As the American poet Louise Glück wrote in her poem 'Nostos': "We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory." For Indians of my generation, the holy trinity or cricket means Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Rohit Sharma, and Virat Kohli. I still remember his 133* off 86 against Sri Lanka at Hobart all the way back in 2012. Virat Kohli was only 23 years old at the time. That innings announced his arrival in the world of cricket as one of the greatest run chasers the game will ever see.
Fourteen years have passed since then and Virat Kohli has soared to tremendous heights, producing one iconic innings after another like the 183 vs Pakistan in Mirpur, 2012; 100* off 52 vs Australia in Jaipur, 2013; 82* off 51 vs Australia in Mohali, 2016; 82* off 53 vs Pakistan in Melbourne, 2022; 117 vs New Zealand in Mumbai, 2023; and 76 vs South Africa in Barbados, 2024, contributing to India's T20 World Cup final win.
It has always been pleasurable to watch Kohli effortlessly cruise past one milestone after another, but there was something bittersweet about watching him on Sunday. The last five years have not been kind to him. He experienced a prolonged slump in international matches between 2020 and 2025. He has been called selfish. He took off the T20I captain's cap in 2021, and was removed from the role in ODIs by the BCCI in December of the same year. He resigned from Test captaincy immediately after the Cape Town Test loss on January 15, 2022, ending a 7-year tenure as India's most successful red-ball skipper. He retired from T20 Internationals in June 2024 and Test cricket in May 2025.
Since then, Kohli has dedicated himself to the ODI format. As many have pointed out on social media since Sunday, he has scored 899 runs in his last 11 ODI innings. The 139* on Sunday also marked his 3rd fastest century and the rareified achievement of 15,000 ODI runs. He now stands at the top of the game with Sachin Tendulkar. "For me, it (2027) is the last World Cup I'm going to play for India," Kohli told broadcaster JioStar on Saturday. Only time will tell whether he will surpass the god of cricket by the time he hangs his cap for good, but on Sunday he produced something akin to perfect cricket.
As I watched the match with the joy and sorrow of watching Kohli near the twilight of his career, I kept thinking about these lines from 'Ford v. Ferrari' (2019): "There's a point at 7,000 RPM... where everything fades. The machine becomes weightless. Just disappears. And all that's left is a body moving through space and time. 7,000 RPM. That's where you meet it. You feel it coming. It creeps up on you, close in your ear. Asks you a question. The only question that matters. Who are you?"
Virat Kohli is there now. He is a body moving through space and time — writing cricketing history with every stroke of his bat. All debates about averages and the strength and weaknesses of his peers and opponents are moot points, mere statistics. He knows who he is, and so do we: he is the greatest of all time. There will never be another like him.
