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In a sporting summer that is challenging even the most voracious appetites, the one-day international series between England and India that gets under way next Tuesday could be viewed as the wafer-thin mint that tips people over the edge.
But for all that 50-over cricket is on the retreat, and its World Cup is still 15 months away, it is worth loosening the belt a further notch or two for this one. Virat Kohli will be back smouldering in blue for the tourists, in what will probably be the last chance to watch one of the all-time greats bat in this country.
As the various festival line-ups this year show, your favourite band or solo artist can keep going long after their heyday, with the market heavily driven by nostalgia. Sadly, sportspeople have a more limited shelf-life, however, with this season having already seen Kane Williamson and Ben Stokes exit the stage.
Aged 37, Kohli is still an active international cricketer and, if Instagram followers are anything to go by, the third most popular athlete in the world after Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. But he has also pared back his schedule considerably, retiring from T20 internationals in 2024 and Test cricket last year.
It leaves Kohli focusing on the Indian Premier League – a tournament his Royal Challengers Bengaluru side have won twice in the past two seasons – and the ODI format of which, with a record 54 centuries, he is unquestionably king.
Kohli and his wife, the Bollywood actor Anushka Sharma, have also relocated their young family to London during this time. Though a city of nine million residents, it offers a relative sanctuary compared to what can be goldfish bowl existence back home. Not that they are left alone entirely.
Last month, a day out from making his Test debut for England at the Oval, Jordan Cox met up with Kohli, his captain at RCB, in a London cafe. Cox was worried about a lack of nerves, with Kohli reassuring him that this was a far better headspace to be in than before his own debut 15 years earlier, when he was “shitting himself”.
But while the pair thought they had gone largely unnoticed, save for a couple of double-takes, it did not take long for paparazzi shots to start circulating online.
“The upsetting thing for him is that people are following him without him knowing,” Cox tells the Guardian. “Hundreds of people walked past us, no one stopped, no one did anything. But then about two hours later he’s texting me going ‘have you seen all these photos?’. I was like ‘what the hell?’.
“It’s just a shame how many people want a piece of him. He just wants to go under the radar, have fun and live a normal life. Unfortunately, that’s not always possible.”
The meeting itself was in keeping with the Kohli that the public does not see. For all that he is a firebrand on the field, technical excellence underpinned by a burning competitiveness that often riles opponents, he is a very different character off it.
Cox says: “The thing that I found the most special during the IPL is how much time he gave me as a player and, for someone that’s achieved so much, how much he gives back generally. Some guys focus on their own game but he is someone who always wants to help others before he helps himself. That is very rare.”
Kohli’s move to London – and the yawning gaps between his cricket commitments – means he does much of his training at Lord’s, with Marylebone Cricket Club more than happy to facilitate this. A member of his entourage will usually call in advance, with Ryan ten Doeschate, India’s assistant coach, often the one giving throwdowns.
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So far this lack of game time has not affected Kohli’s output. As well as being RCB’s leading scorer during those two IPL title wins (while notably upping his strike-rate) he has three centuries in his past six ODIs. According to Mo Bobat, RCB’s director of cricket and previously in the England set-up, it says plenty about Kohli’s drive.
Bobat says: “When he told us he was retiring from Test cricket we talked a bit about how [the gaps between cricket] might affect him. I think he probably took that as a bit of a challenge and wanted to prove us wrong. He prioritises his mental and physical preparation quite a lot now, and he trusts his ability to hit balls.
“He just keeps getting better, certainly in T20. He’s playing with a consistency and a tempo that he might not have shown in his earlier years. He’s been incredibly selfless when we’ve needed him to be. But the bits that you really appreciate are the off-field stuff: his professionalism and his intensity as a role-model.
“If I’m totally honest, he irritated me when I was with England and we played India because he’d normally score runs or be in the thick of it in pressure moments. He would be in your face and make sure you knew it. But as soon as I got on his side of the fence, those attributes are the things that you love about him.”
According to one source at MCC, Kohli’s semi-regular net sessions at Lord’s are facilitated in the hope that one day he might turn out for London Spirit in the Hundred. With Bobat now heading up that franchise, and Andy Flower the men’s head coach as he is at RCB, you can see the logic.
Although this feels a tad optimistic. For a start, India’s men are barred from overseas franchise leagues and must retire from Indian cricket altogether if they want to go down that route. Kohli, unlikely to give up his reported £1.6m IPL deal, is also on record dismissing the 100-ball format as “an experiment”.
And so with the 2027 World Cup likely to be his final assignment with India – likewise Rohit Sharma, who has similarly retired from all but ODI cricket and also returns to the Indian XI next week – this mid-summer series does feel significant.
It starts at Edgbaston on Tuesday, moves to Cardiff two days later, before wrapping up on the Sunday at Kohli’s adopted home of Lord’s. As stuffed as sports fans may be feeling right now, it will be worth loosening belts a little more.
