Kohli looked like a man who had poured everything he had into every moment but found the wall in front of him unmoved ©BCCI

There was an expression on Virat Kohli's face in the game against the Delhi Capitals that I had seen only once earlier. It is an expression I hope I don't see too often in the years ahead.

Kohli looked forlorn. He carried an air of resignation, of a person who was lost and bereft of hope. It was so contrary to everything we have seen over the years. I visualise Kohli and I think of possibility. I see a ferocity of desire. I see a young man whose energies, whose existence, are focussed on what he can do, on how he can win a game. He might gesture, he might rant, even rage, he might grit his jaw, clench his fist, challenge the opponent with that intense glare but Kohli doesn't look defeated. He shouldn't. He wasn't made to be.

I got the feeling I was seeing a man who had poured everything he had into every moment but found the wall in front of him unmoved. And maybe, just maybe, he thought he can't move it. He will be angry because his team-mates have under-performed. Not just with bat and ball because that can happen to anyone but in the field, in their movements, in the little things that add to pressure and create wins. An overthrow. A fielder on his heels. A no-ball. A leg side line when the field is set on the off. Maybe they are stressed too, maybe he can't understand why everyone can't play with his intensity. Maybe it is overwhelming them.

But more than anything else, he will be exhausted. He is a young man at the height of his physicality and so tiredness can be overcome. But the draining of the mind cannot. I was talking to an international cricketer recently and was told "You can't be captain every day of your life". I can see where the line was coming from. You might disagree. You might point out, with justification, that MS Dhoni did that. But Dhoni is more of a philosopher than Kohli is. His fire burns gently. Kohli is a volcano, he erupts. Dhoni flows. I get the feeling that Dhoni can leave the result, win or loss, behind on the ground. I don't know if Kohli can.

But Kohli's intensity, his fire, his rage, is his strength. It has taken him to where few thought he could reach. Take it away and there is no Kohli left. Take away emotion and sensitivity and there is no poet left. The winner in Kohli looks at situations like few others can. Tell him it can't be done and watch him go for it.

That is why I was so struck by that expression. I asked our director to pull it out and play it again and it showed this person who had to be Kohli, who looked like him but just wasn't him. And at that moment, I wondered if he should step back a bit, maybe let someone else think of tactics and selection and emotions. And just bat.

I haven't spoken to him lately but I know that if this thought is put to him, he will reject it violently. People who make things happen don't back off, maybe they liken it to quitting. But resting from the captaincy of RCB isn't quitting, it is allowing his batteries to recharge for the World Cup and yet, remaining a match winner with the bat. He will not be a lesser person for it. But then, I don't inhabit the world people like him do, I can't think like them. I just know that the Kohli I saw in that picture is not the Kohli I want to see.

Should he rest from the IPL completely? He can't because, like the biggest matinee stars, there is too much riding on him; large sponsorship deals, franchise commitments and still somewhere, the hope of the fans who are at the heart of the team and who turn up even when it loses. It is all part of being Virat Kohli.

Or, of course, he could just continue and rest for two weeks after the IPL. It is something he knows best because these decisions are very personal and he will know how much he can extract out of himself knowing that losses are very tiring. But he has to turn up at the World Cup not just fit and in form but intensely optimistic.

In the last eleven years the only other time I saw him like this was in Manchester in 2014. I was eating by myself in a restaurant when he walked in with his brother. He couldn't buy a run on that tour, he couldn't force a smile. We chatted politely and I suggested it might be the hour before the dawn. I don't think even RCB would mind if this too were the hour before the dawn in June and July.

© Cricbuzz