This blog has a weird name.
The mainstream cricket blog's baptism takes place using field positions. It can be "point" or "silly point" depending on the writer's style. It can be "mid on" or "long on" depending on the average word count. It can be "fine leg" or "cow corner" depending on the density of milk the writer drinks. I chose something I must cough these days to talk about.
I've had people subscribe to this blog because they thought it was an Indian fan page, unsubscribed when they found out it was not, and sent me interesting words. One friend was convinced I'd made a mistake when I uploaded a rehashed Steve Smith picture for an Instagram page ostensibly stanning Kohli. Part of this is understandable because the Virat Kohli fan base is like a eutrophicated water body running all through the country and meeting the sea gods in Worli. You can almost picture the alga sidling into the ocean, carousing through miles and miles, and finding collective refuge in an uninhabited island they little hesitate to call Kohlitown.
Indeed, most fan bases are like that. Yet, judging from the faces behind the avalanche of engagements that flooded Kohli tributes between Saturday and now, and the many, many, many times when I’ve scuba dived in that sea and choked and returned, two things can be said about Kohlitown that differentiate the island nation from the rest. One, they’re a younger population. And two, they’re a more vituperative cabal.
This is not unpredictable. Personality cults flourish in low-income countries due to childhood deprivation of primary caretakers. This missing parent is often male because poverty is significantly correlated with sexual division of labour. Effectively, kids grow up with absent fathers and it shows. Let's go back to sociologist Theodore Adorno’s commentary on fascism where personality cults of a different magnitude loom. Stephen Cook, the American computer scientist, writes in his introduction to Adorno: “Adorno frequently remarks that few fascist leaders present themselves as traditionally ‘patriarchal’ authority-figures, a development he ascribes to the decline of the family: ‘as the father ceases to be the guarantor of the life of his family, so he ceases to represent psychologically a superior social agency.’ He quotes with approval Erikson’s characterization of Hitler as not a paternal Kaiser or President but ‘the Führer: a glorified elder brother, who replaces the father, taking over all his prerogatives without over-identifying with him.’”
Cults of personality are convenient prospects in societies where ageist familial hierarchies are enforced, and India is one such place. Why is this tendency collectively observed across societies rather than amidst poorer or conservative subsets? I honestly do not know. Maybe it is culturally encoded as a survival trait rather than inherited through the historical route because we have been low-income and Victorian for far too long. Besides, I think we fail to appreciate how sport is very often a tool for socialization rather than an object of independent watching. Conformation is rewarding in this context. By the same token, why did the Kohli fanatic take shine to a sporting personality despite the affluence of alternate options and the Kohli years coinciding with the rise of Indian right-wing nationalism? Perhaps, politics is not an easy getaway for the teenager for it is gatekept by the adult and is harder for a thirteen-year-old to get their head around.
At the same time, Kohli also fits perfectly into the “New India” that the teen hears persistent murmurs about. Not only does India’s greatest male cricketer flaunt his arrogance in his teammates’ guts and blow kisses to his girlfriend from the pitch, his Indian team is also unlike any other. There’s a reason why India’s far-right populist government is keen to annex the BCCI.
But that’s not all. Kohli in India is also an archetype of freedom. He - or at least his public image - is so far divorced from the desi ideals of deference to superiors and drawing room aloofness that you could tether these qualities to him and he’d dismantle the strings at the same pace at which he cut short the ropes of seniors in Tests. These acts make him abhorrent to the upper-class potbellied uncle, but they make him the vanguard of the independence movement of the teenager – for the villainous swine of the teenager’s independence movement is none else but the uncle. And though part of this seeming demagougish rebelliousness toppled off in the aftermath of his tweets in the wake of the farmers' protests, what it does is to make him retain just enough conservative values to not be seen as a complete outlaw in the teenager’s eyes. He also plays through the pain of his father’s death, heralds demonetization like a fellow member of the cult, and lambasts Pakistani players on the field – but still ends up gifting the meritorious Mohammad Amir his bat come the end of play.
He’s a bit like George Costanza’s father in that one episode: he spews slander on the cricket field but the slander is “serenity now”. He’s like Maggi noodles in a way: he allows the young adult to cook his own tale with only scant dependence on the tried and tested spices concocted by the parents.
There's another big thing I've come across. I’ve talked to about a dozen cricket-minded peers, and provided they also war for Kohli on social media there is one word that never goes out of their jargon – motivation.
There is a full-fledged motivation cottage industry that emanates from Kohli. It paraphrases the American dream, affirms meritocracy, and bellows cacophonously the resounding maxim that for those who claim glory choosing not to take a day off is easier. Inside this world, it is supreme to brave the Delhi cold and wake up at 5 am in the morning because rest days are cheat days. You can fling back from any adversity if you have the will to do so, even if the adversity took place in a sample where you played just as many not-in-control shots as usual and the comeback unfolded on a terrain best suited to your attacking strokeplay. True, much of these Instagram posts and Twitter drivel is psychobabble spouted by self-invigorating athletes, but Kohli is the best batter in the world. That the Lokapally biography written on him as early as 2016 became a hit national bestseller is not merely commentary on his superstardom, it also contributes to the fanaticism.
The supply chain of literature exists because Kohli crunches his abs and scuttles rapidly between the wickets in the cynosure of the public eye. The demand exists because Indian upper-class teenagers, especially males, run on extrinsic fuel. Since breadwinning is key, preference for discipline is thrust away. Scuttling for the rare engineering seat but with very little original motivation they need something from the outside that props them up and tells them it’s within their reach. Kohli’s meritocratic thinking suffices when coupled with the results he achieves.
Above all, he allows young children to “claim cricket” as their own, disjoining themselves from the tyranny of the adult word according to which if you haven’t watched Tendulkar you haven’t watched cricket. He allows them to look at their potbellied uncles in the eyes and retort, “if you’ve got Sachin we’ve got Virat”, and it won’t be blasphemy because they’re not incorrect; Kohli is the wizard of the willow he is. It’s lost authority reclaimed, an inch of freedom gained.
This is all much too similar to that time when I tried to disgrace the Lord’s slope and failed, I know. The slope’s effect on the double projectile motion undertaken by the cricket ball is not merely through the air; it is also off the pitch as the ball should obey the laws of reflection. I was not a physicist. I’m not a sociologist either. I’m obviously just some crazy guy on the street crying out loud that Kohli is similar to Adolf Hitler.
And needless to say, the dominant reason why there is superstardom surrounding Kohli is that he is the athlete he is. Here are the others.