Adelaide 2014, the stage was set for MS Dhoni to go on his conquest of exacting revenge for the 2011 brutality that the Clarke’s men had dished out on them. But the sporting world was not ready yet, mourning the loss of one of its beloved sons, who instead of batting and batting long at his favourite SCG, was being given a tribute of a different kind at his lovely countryside village of Macksville. The poignancy of the moment was hard to miss, even if you were thousands of miles away. 

The world is going through a global crisis, one that has tied the entire humankind to their small quarantine set-up. Nothing less, nothing more, we are a slave of a deadly-predator that has shaken our core and threatened an entire generation to be masked for their own doing. During the timeframe, however, England and Windies decided to uplift the spirit of the entire world, with a Test series that would’ve mattered for little in the alternate universe. 

Even before international cricket officially returned to our TV screen, the battle-line was already drawn. Many even took this as an unplanned audition for Ben Stokes to be elevated for a higher and more important position in English cricket. Their Captain Fantastic. Sorry Joe, Nevermind!

For Kohli six years ago, the situation was not too different, too, as MS Dhoni’s limitations as a Test skipper had already been exposed big-time in the away tours. Dhoni’s ability as a batsman and a keeper in the longest format of the game was questioned and so was his decision-making ability in red-ball cricket. India were too eager to step foot to the Kohli era and turn their future around. The result? Well, One not that great. Another Indian loss Down Under.

India lost the 2014 Adelaide Test but there was the zeal to fight fire by fire and never let the home side take the game away just like that. Bharat Sundaresan summarized the loss quite beautifully in his blog for Indian Express back then, “India lost their last eight wickets for 73 runs in one session. It was a pursuit leaden with danger. But they never froze. Eventually, they earned the plaudits and respect of their opponents. For, the Aussies were never given a let-off. In a way, despite the eventual loss, this was probably the seminal wind of change that Indian cricket had yearned for. The foundations for a brave, new India might have just been laid at the Adelaide Oval.”

Virat Kohli had received criticism in the press conference for not going for a safe option like draw and letting the Aussie take 1-0 up in the series. But Kohli stood by it and ensured when he formally took over the full-time responsibility in the New Year Test in Sydney, the joie de vivre would be rolling on. Would an Indian fan have asked for any less? Forget the series losses on foreign soil for a moment, the moments and the fights and the zeal to go for the gold made things sweet because they believe that they can. That is this Indian team’s legacy which could have gone another way had it not been that Adelaide Test of 2014, or, in other word’s Virat Kohli’s first Test as an Indian captain.

Broad surely had a reason to feel disheartened by the gesture to leave him out of the side, for any world-class bowler with 485 Test wickets and with the kind of he is in would, but Stokes ensured  Broad be in a better frame of mind, even after that outburst. "He has been exceptional. He knocked on my hotel room door at 9pm on Thursday and asked for a chat. He said: 'This is nothing about cricket. I just wanted to know how you're feeling.' That was a classy touch and the sort of thing that leads teams forward. If there were any doubts from the outside on how he would deal with being a captain, how he has conducted himself with me should dispel them,” Broad wrote in his Mail on Sunday column.

The Adelaide Test of 2014 saw Virat Kohli at his top of the game - mind you, it was his first Test series after that horror of 2014 England tour - and Kohli delivered a masterclass of batting performance in both the innings. Had India won that game, it would have been written and rewritten and talked and celebrated probably in the same breath as the Desert Storm innings. The fact that India lost that game, somehow disregarded the importance of Kohli’s knock.

In many ways, Stokes captaincy stint for one game showed a facet of his character that was often undervalued. The strength of mind he showed to shrug off the catcalls and keep the shots coming was remarkable for his own good as we saw in Southampton in the first Test. The Caravan has been moved to Old Trafford, and Joe Root will be back leading them in whites, like MS Dhoni did in Brisbane in 2014, but the Stokes era that had been ushered a few days ago would retain a credibility that a normal egomaniac could never have sustained. For Kohli and Stokes are fundamentally two great players, and who could disagree that history will remember them as two great leaders of men as well.