Virat Kohli slides into dangerous territory

By its very nature, competitive sport lends itself to comparisons. When athletes are at their peak, we see how they stack up against their contemporaries and draw parallels with past greats. When they are down, struggling towards the latter stages of their careers, we tend to look at others who went through a similar slump and wonder whether this could be the end of the road for them.

Virat Kohli has experienced both ends of the spectrum over the last decade.

In Kohli’s case — as is customary for the very best players —he’s also measured by the exalted standards he has set. That high benchmark, though, is becoming a distant memory with each passing innings.

After a disastrous 2014 tour of England, when he returned 134 runs in five Tests at an average of 13.4, his period of domination began on the tour of Australia that December when he hit 692 runs in four Tests with four hundreds.

For the next five years, Kohli exuded an air of invincibility; scoring centuries seemed like a routine day at work. It seems anything but straightforward now as a three-figure score has eluded him since his 139 in India’s first pink-ball Test against Bangladesh in November 2019. His Test average has nosedived from 63.64 during that five-year phase to 28.12 since December 2019.

His ODI average for those periods is equally stark at 75.87 and 37.66 respectively. The T20I numbers don’t vary significantly across these phases, but he has only scored 149 runs in nine games in the last one year at a modest strike rate of 113.74.

The reason for Kohli’s unravelling is something everyone has wondered about. Most importantly, is he in the middle of an extended bad patch -- which may require him to recharge at other levels before returning to international cricket -- or is it a deeper, harder-to-reverse, decline?

So how about delving into his numbers for the two contrasting phases and comparing the batter we see today to the one who couldn’t seemingly put a foot wrong at one stage?

Data from CricViz shows instructive changes that have played a part in Kohli’s ongoing lean run. Foremost among them is the 33-year-old’s susceptibility to getting bowled far more frequently in recent times.

From December 2014 to November 2019, he was bowled in only 5.9 percent of his innings —five of 90. That has shot up to 20.5% since his last international century — he has been bowled six times in 32 innings. This percentage is equally damning in the 50-over format, swelling from 10.9% to 28.5%. It is arguably the most infuriating form of dismissal for top-notch batters who pride themselves on not letting the ball breach their defence. And it is often a sign of a batsman’s instincts starting to fail him. When Rahul Dravid kept getting bowled on the 2011/12 tour of Australia, for instance, it dawned on him that his reactions were no longer as prompt as required at the highest level, resulting in his retirement after the series.

Out of the six times Kohli has been bowled in Tests since December 2019, four have been to spin. It has contributed to his average against spinners falling from 73.03 to 26.10. While the drop in average against pace bowlers isn’t as stark, it’s still significant given that he aggregates 25.57 as opposed to 48.31 earlier. In ODI cricket too, he’s been bowled six times in the current run, four times to pacers.

It’s not as though there has been a considerable change in bowling plans against the 33-year-old. In Tests, pace bowlers are targetting the stumps a little more than earlier while the percentage of wide deliveries has gone up in the shorter versions.

With the red ball, seamers are also homing in on the full and good length zones a bit more. That they are encouraged to bowl fuller is because Kohli now averages 28.55 against that length (he was averaging 69.64 earlier). The data also illustrates that Kohli is not punishing those deliveries with the authority that he once did. His dot ball percentage has gone up from 66.1 to 78.3 in Tests, playing a part in his strike rate going down to 42.7 from 61.1. His strike rate in ODIs has also taken a slight hit.

All of this seems to have had a cascading effect on his T20 form too. At the start of this indifferent phase, after all, he had produced a few swashbuckling knocks in tune with the changing demands of the shortest version. But his once free-flowing game in white-ball cricket is also deserting him, leading to questions about his place in the squad for the October-November T20 World Cup in Australia.

All this means he’s no longer the indispensable player he was. Between December 2014 and November 2019 he was contributing almost one-fifth of India’s runs (17.85%) in Tests. His contribution has dwindled to 8.33%. In ODIs, the corresponding figures are 20.23% and 11.91%. The difference is negligible in T20Is though (14.54% to 12.08%) but his lower strike rate means he is taking more time to score. India’s new aggressive batting plans puts him at a further disadvantage.

Kohli’s calibre means he can’t be written off yet, but he is in a race to reverse this prolonged slump and ensure it does not overshadow the many peaks he has scaled.

Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.