As Virat Kohli steps into MS Dhoni’s boots, his engaging brand of cricket will be on show

Picking an end-of-year team is a renowned December cliché, and most of them are ill conceived. Take the ICC selection for example – it flouted the basic concept of picking an annual team since the defined time frame didn’t follow the calendar year, instead going ahead with seasons (2015-16 in this case.)

Perhaps they knew its demerits when they jotted down the ‘Test team of 2016’, and Virat Kohli’s name was missing therein. As if to compensate for this grave but forced error, they named him captain of the ‘ODI team of 2016’. Even Cricket Australia’s ‘ODI team of the year’ has Kohli listed as skipper, defying any iota of logic that remained, for he hadn’t yet led India in the shorter formats.

“He is a very emotional character out on the field. I guess for us as a team it’s trying to get him out of the strong emotional state, and try and make him, I guess, a little bit angry and ruffle his feathers and things like that. I think if you can get him in that state then the Indian team can possibly be a little bit vulnerable,” Australia’s captain Steve Smith.

All of that changed last week when MS Dhoni stepped down. As such, this isn’t about odd, eye-grabbing, fantasy team-selections stirring up social media debates. It is about Kohli, about his exploits in 2016 that saw him rise to the height of batting supremacy, of his team’s winning streak that mirrors his infectious desire to win, and how he has become the one cricketer you simply cannot ignore at present.

At first look, it was an odd thing to say. But for an Australian captain, whilst engaged in a winning contest against Pakistan on home soil, it was par for course to take a sneak peek at a future opponent. Yet, Smith could have asked Mitchell Johnson about Kohli’s reaction when angry. Or, off late, Ben Stokes is the best person to answer that. Even James Anderson.

“I don’t have respect for someone who comes at me like that,” said Kohli of his verbal duel with Johnson at the MCG in 2014. “What was said on the field should stay on the field,” he said, about his engagement with Stokes in Mohali (November.) “I laughed when told about his comments. I didn’t know what to say to it,” he said in Mumbai (December), on Anderson’s remark about his form and conditions.