"If you want to win a series away from home, it has to be an obsession. And once you are obsessed, changing your decisions according to opinions is not an option at all. Instinctively, you have a gut feeling of playing a shot or bowling a particular ball. And inside if you feel good about doing something in a particular Test match, you should just follow that. You can't change for someone else."

***

In the concrete bowels of the SCG, Virat Kohli climbs the steps and takes his seat at the table, behind the microphones, facing around 35 journalists and more than a dozen cameras.

India lead the series 2-1; the Border-Gavaskar Trophy has been retained but the historic series win is not secure. Australia could still draw the series with a victory in Sydney.

A journalist asks if history matters to Kohli.

"If you ask me very honestly, no," Kohli replies. "Because what's gone is not in our control and what is going to come is not something you need to think about. We need to stay in the present and focus on the things we can do."

Kohli goes on to talk about "the controllables" and regurgitates the standard lines that a captain is wont to do when the game ahead means everything and a loss is too awful to contemplate. Best to minimise and deflect expectation. Control the controllables. Focus on the present. Any Test victory is special.

The table in the press conference room is draped with Cricket Australia's slogan in its attempt to reconnect with fans after an annus horribilis: "It's Your Game." It could be there solely for Kohli. It's his game, after all.

Before the series started, it was all about Kohli. It's always about Kohli. Six months earlier, in England, it was the same, and it precedes every other series involving India. How do you stop him scoring? How do you take his wicket? Can he be provoked? Will he provoke? Is his captaincy up to the mark? What about that other time Kohli did that thing and people reacted?

Other Indian players starred in the series win in Australia, so why are we still obsessing over Virat Kohli? Getty Images

Indian fans laugh at the opposition. Kohli lives in your heads, rent-free, they say. They are right.

Kohli has moved in, set up his furniture and is sitting on his comfy couch in a smoking jacket with his slippered feet up, watching a highlights reel of a historic series victory. If he smoked, he'd be puffing on a stogie. If he drank, he'd be sipping a fine whiskey.

But it's not just opposition fans, it's India fans as well. It's the media in every country he visits, it's the media at home.

The phenomenon that is Kohli could not have happened in any previous era. There have been other rock-star cricketers in India, from the moment Sunil Gavaskar became a national obsession, to the age of the venerated Sachin Tendulkar, but they came before the world transformed into its own social media microcosm.

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But it isn't also just a question of timing. Kohli is a magnet for attention because of who he is as a cricketer and a person. His playing style is as attractive, domineering and entertaining as it is technically and tactically sound, and as a result, it seems to eclipse all else. A video of his nets session in Adelaide caused worldwide rapturous swooning of Beatlemania proportions. In terms of the contest about to unfold it was meaningless. Kohli himself had a modest - by his ludicrously high standards - series, although his century in Perth ranks among the best of his career. A more telling video would have shown Cheteshwar Pujara modestly practising his forward defence and his patient leaves in the Adelaide nets - turn sound on for the gentle thwack and whoosh of the ball hitting the net, folks! - but that wouldn't have generated the views or the clicks. It's all about Kohli, Kohli, Kohli.

Fox Cricket commissioned at least two promos for their coverage in Australia that feature only the visiting captain. One shows him in action with the bat - familiar scenes: smiting the ball, interspersed with intense close-ups and the message, The King is Coming. In another, a cartoon Kohli appears smiling in different heroic guises: as a flying Superman, as Usain Bolt striking his winning pose, as Ethan Hunt carrying out a Mission Impossible.

***

You suspect he is acutely aware of his own magnetism and uses it to the team's advantage. Last time India toured Australia, Kohli was majestic with the bat, took over the captaincy from MS Dhoni, and lost the series. This time around, with all eyes and cameras on him again, Pujara and Jasprit Bumrah were the chief destroyers; one an immovable object that blunted Australia's bowling attack, the other an irresistible force whose quirky, jerky catapult action scythed through the fragile batting.