At 25, Virat Kohli has already achieved more on the cricket field than most do in their entire careers. That attitude coupled with remarkable skill has made this man an unconventional role model and a marketer’s delight. Oh, and the swagger. That helps too
Virat Kohli is nothing like the universally loved, happy-go-lucky, pudgy-around-the-edges cricket superstars he grew up idolising. He is, perhaps, their antithesis. Arguably India’s best batsman today, he has a polarising effect on the cricket-crazy millions where even some of his admirers are not sure if they ‘love’ him. But Kohli doesn’t need to be liked as long as he delivers. He is oblivious to the expectations from a typical Indian cricketer’s personality —placid, conciliatory and pleasant. He is unapologetically aggressive and fiercely athletic. The swagger keeps the marketers and the media interested but what has earned him the admiration of the youth of this country is his skill, commitment, focus and attention to fitness. There is little doubt that he is the new, irreverent face of Indian cricket. It is a heavy responsibility, one that is still sinking in because this transition, over just the last year-and-a-half, has happened so quickly. “I am still only 25, so it is very hard to sit down and think of myself as a role model. Even now, if I have the option, I will grab some of my friends, walk into a mall and go eat at a store that I like. I am that kind of a guy,” Virat Kohli tells Forbes India. “I don’t like [having] drivers or servants. I drive myself.
I do stuff at home myself. It is hard for someone like me, who has done everything all by himself all his life, to suddenly start thinking that people actually want to follow me.”
The (Role) Model
For an outsider, ad film shoots in Mumbai can be fairly surreal. Hundred or so people buzz around the large studio: The bearded, tattooed, earring-wearing ‘creatives’ from the advertising agency argue with the suited executives from the client’s side while bereted directors orchestrate operations in between cups of green tea. Sitting patiently, quietly, in this maelstrom is the ‘talent’.
Kohli is taller than you would expect. He surveys the spread of chips, chocolates and soft drinks and reluctantly grabs some organic wheat crackers. “It’s all junk,” he sighs as the director calls him over to the set. Mahendra Singh Dhoni walks in silently, entourage first. Kohli greets him and they begin almost immediately. Both have the thousand-yard stare of professional athletes who have come to accept this necessary nuisance.
Kohli is interested in how he appears on camera and goes over to the director to review each shot. He has been filming for four hours, for an energy drink, after flying into Mumbai from Delhi where he had been shooting for two days. We sit in his trailer and he lies back on the bed. “Long day?” we ask.
“This is nothing,” he shrugs with tired shoulders.
“We shot for 14 hours straight with Anushka Sharma,” says his assistant. “Three days back-to-back.”
The last time he took a holiday was eight months ago, before the 2013 IPL, for four days in Dubai. This is Kohli’s life now. “I used to enjoy these shoots. Now I am professional about it. I come in and do what I am asked,” he says. At just 25, his success on the cricket field has earned him 13 ongoing endorsement deals, including one with Adidas reportedly at an unprecedented Rs 10 crore per year—this puts him in a league of his own. The company had paid this amount just so their rivals couldn’t have him.
Kohli has the posing down to an art. He lowers his head and glances at the camera side-on. Take after take, he walks back to his starting spot—much like a bowler—and executes his lines till the director is satisfied. He speaks with a cold gaze and steely expression because that is what all the brands want: A tough, intimidating image, not the smiling faces that Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag would put forth.
A young boy waits nervously with his father, a pen in one hand and a bat in the other. He has been on the set for the last two hours and, during a short break, when Kohli takes his seat next to his stylist and manager, the duo takes their chance.
“What’s your name?” Kohli asks the boy as he puts the bat across his lap to sign it. He is learning what it means to be a role model. “This is what I wanted to become. This is what I wanted my life to be like. This is what my dream was: That people will one day want to be like me,” he says. “Now when I see kids coming up to me for pictures or with hairstyles like mine or to tell me, ‘I want to play that shot like you,’ it’s very sweet.”
He is aware of the impact his behaviour may have on the impressionable generation. “I don’t want kids to get inspired by the line that has been crossed at times. I want them to get inspired by us taking Indian cricket forward and being in the face of the opposition,” he says. “People need to appreciate that we are good enough and we are talented enough; you can’t just come around and bully us. This is the new face of the team which people need to see.”
His passion for chasing germinated early. Kohli remembers the first time he ran down a big score in competitive cricket. “We were playing an Under-17 match against Himachal Pradesh in 2005. They had scored around 385 runs. We had lost 4 wickets for 70 and were in trouble. I was batting and I scored 251 not out,” Kohli says. “We took the 1st innings lead. The last wicket, Ishant [Sharma], was batting for us. We had a 90-run partnership in which he scored 2 runs. That was the game that I single-handedly won for us; we scored 400 and I got 250. That was the first time I thought that whatever target is given to us, I think I am good enough to chase that down.”
(This story appears in the 27 December, 2013 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)