Where to now for Kohli-less India?

India captain Virat Kohli may be over the moon at his impending fatherhood. At Cricket Australia, the sense was of imminent lunar eclipse.

India without its talismanic captain Virat Kohli is a far different prospect

There’s been Bennifer. There’s been Brangelina. But no portmanteau super couple in the world enjoys such a following as ‘Virushka’: the amalgam of Virat Kohli and his Anushka Sharma who fuse cricket, Bollywood and elite lifestyle for 1.3 billion Indians.

In Australian cricket’s book of days, August 27 is known for being anniversary of the birth of Sir Donald Bradman. In the realm of Indian celebrity, it was dominated this year by the announcement, inevitably on social media, that the couple would be blessed by the arrival of their first child, scheduled for January.

“It is an incredible feeling,” India’s captain was quoted as saying. “It puts things into perspective for you. It is a beautiful feeling. It is difficult to describe how you feel, but when we found it, we were over the moon.”

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India rejoiced that, moon-wise, Kohli was over it. At Cricket Australia, the sense was of imminent lunar eclipse. Because there was never any serious doubt that this most visibly uxorious of cricketers would put parenthood before participation in a cricket series, however important. Airy talk of Anushka coming to Australia for the nativity was never a prospect.

Now it has been announced that Kohli will be taking his leave after Adelaide’s first Test — what’s noteworthy being not simply that he wishes to be present for the birth, but that he wants clear air around it. He wishes to be an attentive husband as well as an attendant father, to be with Anushka in the final stage of the pregnancy and in the first bloom of motherhood.

There may be something else at work, too, to do with Kohli’s own supremely exacting professional standards.

Kohli gives himself to sport with the totality of a Novak Djokovic. He aims for peak physically and mental proficiency in everything he does. When he films himself in the gym performing one of his fitness routines, you feel sorry for the weights and treadmills — they don’t stand a chance.

Part of Kohli may have feared he could not, under the circumstances, achieve in his Australian tasks the degree of clarity and immersion to which he is accustomed. It will certainly be interesting to see, in years ahead, how Kohli’s career and customs are inflected by parenthood. Cricket and marriage have coexisted peacefully in his life; cricket and children will be harder to reconcile.

Virat Kohli with wife Anushka Sharma

It did not seem coincidental that Kohli chose last week to make some pertinent remarks about the pressures of a cricket life spent hopping from one biosecure lily pad to another: “These things will have to be considered. Like what length of the tournament or series one is going to play and what impact it will have on players mentally to stay in a similar environment for 80 days and not do anything different. Or have space to just go and see family or small things like that.” It was spoken like a man with family very much on his mind.

Times have clearly changed. It was regarded as extraordinarily enlightened when Shane Warne was permitted to fly home from the 1997 Ashes tour when he became a father.

The actual birth of Warne’s daughter Brooke, in fact, occurred during Australia’s tour match against Oxford University, and Warne had to take 6-48 in the Manchester Test before his brief furlough.

Being busy in a World Cup two years later, Warne was not inclined to a similar step for the birth of his son Jackson. “I was fine about it,” wrote Warne in his autobiography. “I had a great vibe about Jacko. I think it was a boy thing.”

Expectant cricketers either delaying tour arrivals or flying home for births have since become a relative commonplace, but they’ve still tended to be low-key base-touchings. Kohli, as in his cricket, is taking things to a new level. Why? Because he can. He is Kohli. And good for him.

Not so good, alas, for India. It’s not that there’s no show without Punch so much as that touring teams here need every advantage.

India is a superior ensemble to England in 2017-18, who went from Buckley’s chance with Ben Stokes to none without him. But Kohli, by his constant challenging and chivvying in all three formats, provides India’s cricket with a continuity of tone and tempo that will now be missing.

Ajinkya Rahane appears the likeliest locum, but Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul will have advocates, and an Indian set-up without a strong overseer can be a restless place.

Rohit’s omission from the initial squad due to a “hamstring tear” was a classic BCCI selection riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, coming as it did, as we now know, on the day Kohli apparently advised the selectors of his intentions.

Rohit’s reinclusion now, the day before the IPL final in which he will apparently play despite already having been ruled out of India’s short-form games in Australia to rest said hamstring, is still more opaque.

Has Rohit, some wondered, been signifying displeasure by dropping “Indian cricket” from his various social media handles? When you have 16.4 million Instagram and 17.7 million Twitter followers, it’s hard to do anything without inviting interpretation.

Kohli’s absence will assuredly peel some of the gilt from this Border-Gavaskar Trophy. The Australian team itself will him. His captaincy rivalry with Tim Paine and batting rivalry Steve Smith are the sort of stimuli that draws from cricketers their best.

And there’s no getting round it: the Australian media will miss Kohli. He has always reminded me of that story Ian Chappell tells of going to his first Test as a boy, and his father repeating: “Watch Miller. Watch Miller. Watch Miller.” You could watch Kohli all day and not get bored. About Virushka, with the best will in the world, it is hard to feel entirely the same.