10,000 mark in ODIs © AFP

In the era of excessive advertising, we've all come across that archetypal 'transformation' ad. The before and after pictures of a morbidly obese man and his transformation into a male model with square jawlines; or a balding middle-aged man who has metamorphosed into a fashion icon with dense, enviable hair.

And then we've seen time lapses, in photography, and in pop culture. Case in point: the Academy award-winning movie, Boyhood, was filmed over the course of 12 years (2002-2013) following the male protagonist from the age of 6 to 18. It runs for 2 hours and 45 minutes, so we essentially see a time lapse through his growth spurts, and, inevitably, distinct changes in every scene. However, in a parallel universe, if there was a 12-year long - umm - extended cut of this movie, the before and after shots would've seemed far more staggering in retrospect.

For the Indian cricket aficionado, the extended cut started way back in 2008, when a dewy-eyed, zealous teenager by the name of Virat Kohli hit headlines after leading the Indian side to the Under-19 World Cup title. The teenager was fastracked into the senior ODI side as an opener, temporarily replacing one of Sachin Tendulkar or Virender Sehwag - perhaps two of the most feared names in international cricket at the time.

After a decade-long time-lapse, we now see a leader of men with a full beard, sporting his predecessor's salt'n'pepper look - more mature and contained than he was a decade ago, but with a familiar zeal and exuberance of youth. To watch TV replays of his older innings, a teenager with patchy facial hair and a semi-mohawk, it dawns upon us just how much he has grown; how secure he has become as a cricketer and how comfortable he now feels in his own skin.

The eleventh hour - February 28, 2012

A young, chubby twenty-something walks hastily into the Bellerive Oval following the dismissal of arguably the greatest batsman to have wielded the willow. He faces the dreaded silence that he is now accustomed to, particularly after walking in to bat during the World Cup final of 2011, and replacing Sachin Tendulkar at the crease - an experience which he later described as one reminiscent of "walking into a graveyard".

He reaches the pitch, looks overly fidgety and restless, marks his guard, spins the bat like a top in his hands to calm his anxiety more than anything else, and examines the field. Virat Kohli taps his guard to face the first ball...

It was only a few weeks before this pivotal innings, that he had been reprimanded for making rude gestures at a hostile Australian crowd. Yet, he was the only Indian to score a hundred in the Test series; the only Indian, in a batting line-up that included the famed quartet: Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman. The Adelaide hundred had followed an even more impressive 75* at a bouncy WACA, where he had made the first adjustment in his stance: Kohli was now standing taller to get on top of the bounce on the hard Australian surfaces, as opposed to the slow and low Kotla track to which he was more accustomed. Over the course of the two taxing months Down Under, Virat Kohli had learned how to deal with mental disintegration, and it all culminated in a stupendous 133* at Hobart...

His Hobart masterclass didn't get off to a particularly fluent start. Armed with a side-on stance, and a crab-walking trigger, with the front foot walking across towards off-stump, Kohli was certainly limiting his range of shots. Contrary to popular belief, Kohli was never a classical, orthodox batsman. He particularly favoured the glance; and boy, did he nail it, even back when he was a rookie. His trigger and his grip were designed for the shot. Even his cover drive was essentially a bottom-handed glance with his wrists running through the line of the ball. He had calibrated his stance as though there existed a virtual pitch perpendicular to the existing one, and he was effectively glancing it through virtual mid-wicket. Yet, after a bout of rain and a consequently tacky surface, he was unable to time the ball properly, assuming true bounce and continuing to miscue his whip-drives. These drives would give him one fleeting moment to get his wrists through the line and get it right, instead of a larger margin for error with a check-drive.