It’s funny how life works sometimes. You drift away from something you once loved, convinced you’ve outgrown it, only to circle back and realise you missed an entire golden age. Cricket and I have had quite the on-again, off-again relationship.
Picture this: 8-year-old me, fresh off the plane in India back in ’99, having absolutely no clue what cricket even was. In Saudi, it was all football all the time. The transition was jarring, from a world of goalkeepers and penalty kicks to one of wickets and overs. Yet somehow, this peculiar game with its complex rules pulled me in. My grandfather took it upon himself to make me a proper cricket fan. His enthusiasm was infectious. “Always support the underdog,” he’d say, which was honestly adorable considering India wasn’t exactly an underdog, but in his eyes, they needed all the support they could get.
The 2003 Cricket World Cup was fun to watch. I was all in. India making it to the finals? Pure magic! And then… crushing defeat. I’m not being dramatic when I say I was devastated. Like, genuine childhood trauma devastated. I cried like someone had taken away my favorite toy. That loss to Australia stung with the special kind of pain only sports can inflict, the kind that makes you question why you invest so much emotion in something you ultimately can’t control.
Then life happened. You know how it goes. Cricket slowly faded into the background as studies, work, and a thousand other priorities pushed their way to the forefront of my life.
Fast forward to 2023, my brother gets sick. Those were tough days. I started spending more time with him, and guess what he loved watching? Cricket. In those quiet recovery periods, the familiar sound of ball hitting bat became our comforting soundtrack. IPL matches turned into the ODI World Cup, and suddenly India was in another final! Twenty years later! And they lost. AGAIN. But this time, I just shrugged and thought, “Well, Australia played better.” Perhaps age had brought perspective, or maybe I’d just grown less attached to the outcome and more appreciative of the game itself.
Just like that, the algorithm gods decided I needed cricket content injected directly into my veins, filling my feeds with highlights and match analyses. My feed was showing me videos of grown men sobbing over Virat Kohli’s retirement announcement this year. I was genuinely confused. Like, why are these dudes crying over a cricketer retiring? What had I missed during my cricket hiatus that inspired such raw emotion?
Curiosity piqued, I went down a Virat Kohli rabbit hole. And OH. MY. GOD. I missed an entire era of brilliance. The videos, the statistics, the iconic moments, they painted a picture of a sporting phenomenon I had completely overlooked. Between 2016 and 2019, this man turned India into the #1 test team in the world under his captaincy. He somehow made the IPL cricket generation care about test cricket. TEST. CRICKET. The format that lasts FIVE DAYS. In an age of shrinking attention spans and instant gratification, that’s nothing short of miraculous. His technique, his consistency, his ability to perform under pressure, all reminiscent of the Master Blaster, Sachin Tendulkar himself, yet with a fiery temperament that was uniquely Kohli.
The Australians would try their usual intimidation tactics, and Kohli would just stare them down like, “Is that all you’ve got?” He’d then proceed to smash their bowling attack all over the stadium while maintaining aggressive eye contact. This wasn’t just cricket, this was psychological warfare with a cricket bat, and Kohli was a grandmaster. His performances in SENA countries (that’s South Africa, England, New Zealand, and Australia for us casual fans) were legendary. These are places where Indian teams historically struggled, and this man walked in like he owned the place. He didn’t just play cricket, he rewrote the narrative of what Indian cricket could be, fearless, dominant, and unapologetic.
So here I am, a renewed cricket enthusiast, feeling like I missed the party of the decade. Kohli, I didn’t see any of your Test matches in your prime, and now you’re retiring before I could witness even one against England. It’s a bittersweet realisation, like finding out about an amazing concert after the venue has closed.
As Kohli leaves the Test arena, I can’t help but feel I’m witnessing the end of an era I barely participated in. Yet his legacy lives on in the way he transformed the game and inspired millions. And maybe that’s the beautiful thing about cricket, it’s always there waiting for you to return, with new heroes to discover and new stories to tell, even if you occasionally miss a chapter or two.