Virat Kohli spoke engagingly for 10 minutes before sweeping out of the room and down the wide concrete stairs at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, trailed by an ever-thickening swarm of hangers-on, and drawing from somewhere a Beatlemania-style barrage of squeals as he emerged briefly into the light before heading out to the middle for practice.
It seems fair to say there is not another cricketer quite like Kohli, if only because there never has been. Even other modern Indian heroes – the endlessly revered Sachin Tendulkar, the punchier, poppier MS Dhoni – have been distinct. Even Kohli, set as ever on a furious upward curve, has never been at quite the same state-of-the-art level of Kohli-ness, preparing to take the field as India’s official one-day captain for the first time and unchallenged as the most thoroughly glossed and superstar-ish athlete cricket has produced.
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