For the first three overs of Mohammed Amir's spell against India, all the ten runs he gave away were off inside edges, outside edges, byes and leg-byes as Kohli & co struggled to hold themselves down at the crease. Amir's fourth over, however, belonged to Kohli as he carted Amir off for two consecutive fours, the first a pull to square leg and the next a gentle drive to the covers. The four overs left most asking what would have happened if only Amir had another over to bowl against Kohli? Some were wondering how much would Amir have accomplished if not for the five years he lost? I was wondering what these two had gone through in their respective lives that had finally culminated in that one evening.

We take ourselves too seriously all the time. In our minds all our achievements are irrevocably linked to our innate talents and our deliberate actions. Little at all is left to luck or the lack of it and circumstances and their circuitous connections. It takes a bit of humility or a lot of humiliations to realize that much else shapes our lives than what we believe does – only us. And despite our overpowering desire to boil down entire lives to solitary convergences, life seldom follows a staid script. In that light, the two men could not have taken more similar yet diametric routes to get to that memorable pitch in Mirpur.

Cricket in the gullies

Kohli was the last of three kids in a Punjabi middle-class family from the national capital city of Delhi. His dad was a criminal lawyer and they had their own family business, one that did not do so well. Kohli had a very early baptism into the cricketing world according to him. “My family tells me that when I was about three years old I would pick up the bat and start swinging it and force my father to bowl at me,” tells Kohli. His talent was spotted by his neighbors who advised his dad that the son was too talented to waste his time in gully cricket - the nine-year old would begin his journey at the West Delhi Cricket Academy.

Amir was the sixth of seven children born in a remote village in the Punjab district of Pakistan. The school clipboard would routinely vanish to be broken in two and used as a bat by Amir and his mates, and Amir would be the only kid to find a place alongside the big boys in local games. At 11, he was spotted at a local tournament and sent to the Rawalpindi academy of Asif Bajwa – the place where the village kid would be chiseled into a world-class bowler."I was very young at that time and was told I have to stay at the academy, away from home, if I wanted to play cricket," an innocent Amir said back then.

The struggles and the sun shines

Kohli's rise through the age divisions in Delhi was meteoric as expected. He captained the U15 and U17 squads of Delhi before he made his debut for India U19 on their tour of England in July 2006 as a 17-year old. 2006 was also the year that would change Kohli's life forever – he lost his father in the midst of Delhi's Ranji match against Karnataka, but returned to the crease the next day and scored a 90.

"My husband passed away in his sleep at around 2 in the morning. It was difficult for Virat. He came directly to the funeral after his knock of 90. He was wrongly given out. I remember that too," Virat's mother recalled in an interview to ToI.

"Virat changed a bit after that day. Overnight he became a much more mature person. He took every match seriously. He hated being on the bench. It's as if his life hinged totally on cricket after that day. Now, he looked like he was chasing his father's dream which was his own too," she added on the event that precociously pushed him to adulthood.

Amir's ascent was even more incredulous. After ripping through lineups in the regional U19 tournaments, he broke through into the international scene at a ripe young age of 15 in the Pakistan U19 team's tour of England in August 2007. However, his exploits were cut short when he suffered two stress fractures in that England tour sidelining him for almost half a year. "Being away with the injury was a terrible time for me. I used to bowl all day and loved doing that, but in the end that proved to be the reason behind the injury," Amir recalled to espncricinfo .

The first time the two players could have faced off arrived in 2008 – the U19 World Cup in Malaysia. Unfortunately, Amir, who was just back from recovery, was struck down with dengue fever after a three-wicket haul in Pakistan's first match. He was sidelined for the rest of the tournament. Meanwhile, Kohli captained India through the event with a century in the group stages and a 'Man of the matchperformance ' in the semis, awarded in equal parts for his two wickets (one of whom was Kane Williamson) as his 43 runs. Meanwhile, an Amir-less Pakistan lost to South Africa in the other semis. "I had no energy to get up, walk or turn over. I thought that might be the end of my cricketing career," Amir recalled about the illness. "I spent one month in a hospital and one month at home. The world had turned upside down for me," he added.

Kohli with his U-19 WC winning side

The big breaks and the heartbreaks

Kohli debuted for India in the August of 2008 against Sri Lanka after the touring side lost both its openers Sachin and Sehwag to injuries. Kohli batted through the series as an opener and had moderate success with scores of 12, 37, 25, 54 and 31 in the five-match series that India won. That would mark the end of Kohli's short stint in the national side for some time to come. In a dressing room where every second one was a giant of the game, you had to be one to hold your place there – and Virat was not yet 'there'.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Amir was struggling on the comeback trail from his illness. Making his first-class debut, he played with a back strain and bowled only 46 deliveries before he retired hurt.

"People were telling Bajwa (coach) to let me go since I was getting injured often. If I was to take a break then people would forget who Aamer was. I didn't work this hard to come this far and just let it go.

"I wanted to play cricket even if I had to wear 10 belts [for the bad back]. If the pain didn't go away, I told my coach I'd leave cricket and get back to studying, but I wanted to give it a shot," Amir told cricinfo .

­Perseverance paid off as Amir finally made his international debut at the ICC T20 cup in 2009. And he could not have had a more contrasting outing than Kohli's. In his first-ever international over, he bagged a wicket and conceded just one run. His good run with the new ball would continue as he took a wicket in his opening spell in six of Pakistan's seven matches. In the final, he removed the dangerous Dilshan in his first over which also turned out to be a maiden. A month later, he was rushed into the ODI side, and that was no less dazzling as he scalped 19 wickets in no time at an average of 21.3.

The two players would meet once in 2009 – in the Champions trophy. While Kohli had an indifferent outing scoring 16, Amir took two wickets including that of Sachin Tendulkar.

Virat, meanwhile, was relegated to the shadows of even the ODI format after Sachin and Sehwag returned to the line-up. He would linger on playing only ten matches in 2009, finally announcing his arrival with a century only a week before 2009 ended – once again against Sri Lanka. “I really started believing that I belong after my first hundred, against Sri Lanka in 2009 in Kolkata. My ODI career started getting on track and going in the direction that I wanted thereon,” Kohli told cricinfo .

In retrospect, it was a blessing in disguise for Kohli that he had to wait his turn, and Amir would come to rue his precocious blooding in a few years. Early debuts are never as rosy as they seem. Ask Australian Ashton Agar after the 19-year old was mobbed by paparazzi while on a casual shopping trip with his girlfriend. Ask Mr. Cricket Michael Hussey, who debuted a 30-year old and yet feels the happier for it - “The more I have learned about life in the spotlight the more I feel lucky to have had the time to grow up at my own pace.

"Even after 10 years of first-class cricket it was a very confronting adjustment to make when it all started to happen for me," Hussey told cricket.com.au.

“We are our choices”

2010 and 2011 were pivotal years in both the players' lives, the year that turned their lives upside down. Kohli finally made himself a permanent fixture of the ODI team and made his T20 debut as well, although Tests would wait another year. After missing out on a century against Bangladesh, Kohli made amends in the next match against the neighbors with his second international century. After a lean patch in the midst of the year, he cemented his place with back-to-back centuries against Australia and New Zealand in the latter half of the year.

The players met once again in the Asia Cup 2010, but both had a forgettable match as Kohli scored 18 runs while Amir went wicket-less.

The years would also mark the choices that forever would alter their lives. Kohli always believed and still believes in wearing his heart on his sleeve, however, the attitude had reached worrying levels by 2010 that a former cricketer said, "Virat has all the tools to achieve greatness. But his attitude is a worry," reported Deccan Herald. It took a dressing-down from Anil Kumble at RCB in the 2010 IPL season, for Virat to tone down his aggression levels. The two years would mark the phase where he would mature into a cricketer.

Not content with just great, Kohli would choose to aspire to greatness on another level. Talking about the choice later, he would say,“You go through phases in life where you make decisions on whether you want to be mediocre, whether you want to be just performing every now and then, whether you want to be an average cricketer. Or if you strive to be, if you wish to be among the best players in the world, if you want to be consistently getting runs, if you want to take your career to different heights”.

Amir, however, had a different set of choices ahead of him, and he would choose the darker road. While Kohli was coming to the end of his worst stretch in a fledgeling ODI career in August 2010, Amir was terrorizing the English half way across the world. And then, he chose to throw it all away in a moment of madness at the Lord's with those inglorious no-balls. ‘Please don’t let it be the kid,’ Nasser Hussain was praying when the news broke out, but it was him.

The infamous no ball that got Amir in trouble

'We are young and will make mistakes', skipper Salman Butt had said when Pakistan began the series. But Butt's mistakes turned out to be the costly kind and not the kind that can be pardoned as follies of youth. Amir would be the only one to confess to his crime, but along with the other two, Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif, he would be sentenced to a five-year ban in 2011.

While the critics and writers by a majority thought the ban was deserved, men who had held the bat once in their lives were more forgiving. "We also need to recognise that the pressure put on the young player by criminal bookies or their agents, or by their corrupt team-mates, can be appalling," legendary England captain Brearley said in his Voice of Cricket Lecture in 2011. And when that team-mate is your captain and someone you consider an “elder brother”, the pressure can become crushing.

Kohli was lucky not to have been rushed in thanks to the presence of stalwarts in the Indian team who were deemed irreplaceable. More lucky was he that they were also men of standing. Even at the height of the 90s match-fixing scandal, Kohli's idol Sachin had come through unscathed, while Amir's role-model Akram still lives in the shadow of the scandal. Even when Chennai Super Kings was drawn into the thick of the spot-fixing scandal, Dhoni was beyond suspicion. Amir had Salman Butt. In the words of Pakistani writer Saad Shafqat, “the context of Pakistani society, which is deeply permeated with a culture of corruption, Innocent is he who does not get caught," in no small way also played a role in Amir's downfall.

( Take a trip down memory lane with us - The end of the Whistlepodu era )

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us”

In the meanwhile, he appears to have atoned for his deeds. When asked how he felt about the incident, Amir said, “I knew it was unfair to cricket, because it is cheating. No matter how small the dishonest deed is, at the end of the day cheating is cheating.”

The experiences of a life-time packed into a few adolescent years appear to have left an indelible mark on Amir. In the words of interviewer Osman Samiuddin in the national. ae , “He wasn't man-child as much as he was, for periods, both man and child whole, too smart and knowing for a stretch, innocent and untouched at others.” The 'man-child' has been lucky to get married to his lawyer in the course of the trial as well. Unfettered by such weighty concerns, Virat appears every bit a regular Delhi boy off the field. “I love driving. I love speed. I love cars,” he says in an interview to cricinfo . “It was late at night and we were playing against Australia in Delhi. We (Kohli, Dhoni and Raina) started racing and we wanted to see who gets [to the cinema] first. It was a crazy experience and something I like to do every now and then,” he adds in the same breath. However, beneath the brash exterior, he has evolved into a mature leader and a sincere student of the game – his analysis of the match after the duel with Amir in the Asia Cup reminded one of Dhoni's surgical dissections.

Amir celebrates after dismissing Mccullum for a duck, in his comeback game

Five years passed since that day in Lord's before Amir could bowl at the international stage again. By the time, he returned amid heavy opposition even from team-mates, Kohli has established himself as the best batsman in the world, at least in the limited overs formats. He had won the World Cup alongside his idol Sachin and had scored a century along the way. Two years later, he was part of the ICC Champions trophy winning team as well. He had gone on to become the captain of the Indian Test side and given Australia a run for their money in their own backyard before taking the team to many firsts - a home series win against South Africa, and an away series win against Sri Lanka.

After the Asia cup match in February, Shoaib Akhtar compared the Kohli-Amir rivalry to that of his with Sachin Tendulkar. However, with Amir's potential, one can only expect this rivalry to dwarf the Sachin-Shoaib duels. He is still just 24, and appears to be at the peak of his powers despite the long lay-off. And so is Kohli.

Kohli is today one of the best batsmen in the world

Whatever they may go on to accomplish in their own separate ways or together, the two have captured the collective imagination of the people across the borders for more reasons than that – they represent the triumph of the human spirit against odds, the exuberance of youth, and the their rags-to-riches stories. They mark the final step in the silent transformation of the sport at its highest level from that refuge of the rich to a working-class man's game; from the pastime of princelings to the hands of ticket collectors and farmers' sons.