Virat Kohli's Glorious Test Career Moving Towards Its End Or A Comeback Remains On Card?

India vs New Zealand, 2^nd Test, 2024, Pune:
 
1^st innings - Mitchell Santner loops up a juicy full toss to Virat Kohli who goes for an uncharacteristic heave across the line only to find his stumps rattled. Kohli is dismissed for just one.

2^nd innings – Mitchell Santner gets one to rip quickly off the surface which traps Kohli in front of the wickets. DRS suggests that the ball would hit the leg stump. Another failure for Kohli when his team needed him the most. Yet another instance when he succumbed to spin. Yet another instance when he fell to a left-arm orthodox! Kohli exits for 17 leaving India in a crisis.

Is this the end of one of the most glorious careers in India’s Test history? Or is it an aberration?

Virat Kohli is struggling in red-ball cricket, and he has been for a while now. The rot started in 2020 and though there was some kind of reawakening in 2023, Kohli’s batting curve has been on the decline in the last five years. And it continues to spiral down.

Kohli has failed in three of the four innings in the ongoing series against New Zealand. He has looked patchy and out of sorts and scored just 88 runs in four innings. The lack of runs on one side, what is even more concerning is his failure to cope with even non-Grade A spinners and the manner in which he is being dismissed. Kohli has fallen prey to Santner and Glenn Phillips three times in the series and struggled against them.

Let us go back and analyse the dramatic fall of Virat Kohli.

The Golden Period

Kohli was at the peak of his batting prowess across formats between 2016 and 2019 – he was unarguably the greatest batter in international cricket during this period – better than Joe Root, Steven Smith and Kane Willimson. His numbers in Test cricket were outstanding in this time-frame. Kohli scored 4208 runs in 43 Tests in these four years at an astounding average of 66.79. Only Root had a higher aggregate – he scored just 34 more runs but in 29 more innings and Smith had a marginally better average amongst the 57 batters who scored a minimum of 1000 runs in the period. Kohli had an average of 75.93 in 2016, 75.64 in 2017 and 68 in 2019 – the three most prolific years of his Test career.

No one registered more tons than Kohli’s 16 in this period. His appetite for big runs stood out with a stunning conversion rate (50 to 100) in these four years – 16 of the 26 times he crossed a fifty, Kohli went on to reach a triple-digit score! He also scored his runs at a fair tempo at a strike rate of 61.9 which was an indicator of his complete domination against all attacks across the world.

However, a dramatic dip in form post 2019 has seen his numbers sink in the format.

The Big Fall Post 2019

Kohli witnessed a sharp decline in his form post the end of 2019. Controversies on and off the field did not help and added to his pain and misery. Kohli has an aggregate of just 1833 runs in 33 Tests at an average of 32.7 since the start of 2020. While he is still getting the starts, Kohli is failing to convert them into big scores and seems to have lost his appetite for the big hundreds. He has registered just two tons in Test cricket in this time-frame and his frequency of scoring a hundred has gone down from one every 4.3 innings to a shocking, one every 29 innings!

From the number 2 run-getter in the world in the period between 2016-2019, Kohli is not even in the top 5 for India since 2020 -  Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja, Yashasvi Jaiswal and even R Ashwin, have all scored more runs than Kohli in this period.

Kohli did not score a Test hundred from November 2019 till March 2023 – a period spanning 41 innings. He scored just six fifties and averaged a meagre 25.7 in what was the worst phase of his Test career.

Poor Returns at Home

Kohli has seen a massive fall in his numbers in India since the start of 2020. He has scored just 773 runs in 25 innings at an average of 32.2 at home in the last five years. His average in India places him at number 8 amongst the nine batters who have scored at least 500 runs in this time-frame, even behind all-rounders Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja. Kohli has registered just one ton and three fifties and failed in as many as 16 of the 25 innings at home in this period – which makes for a very high Failure Rate of 64%!

Just for perspective, Kohli was sensational in home conditions during his golden era between 2016-2019 – a period in which he hammered 2499 runs in 22 matches at a staggering average of 86.17 with 10 hundreds.

One of the main reasons for Kohli’s struggle in India/Asia since 2020 has been his dismal performance against the spinners.

Problem vs Spin

Kohli has struggled against spinners across formats since the start of 2020. He has been dismissed 25 times in 37 innings, averaging just 32.7 against their ilk in this time-frame. His average against spin falls below 30 (29.5) in India and 28.3 in Asia in this period – in fact, 22 of his 27 dismissals in Asia since 2020 have been against spinners – that is a shocking statistic given the (not so high) quality of opposition spinners who have visited India in this period.

Todd Murphy, Mehidy Hasan Miraz, Matthew Kuhnemann, Moeen Ali, Santner and Jack Leach have been some of the names who have troubled Kohli in Asia in this time-frame.

Kohli has been exceptionally poor against left-arm spin against whom he has scored just 285 runs in 26 innings with 11 dismissals at an average of 25.9 in Asia since 2020.

Kohli’s Test trajectory is on the downward spiral since 2020. He had an average of 19.3 in 2020, 28.2 in 2021 and 26.5 in 2022. Kohli fought back in 2023 scoring 671 runs in 12 innings at an average of 55.9 which included two hundreds. However, his numbers have again seen a steep decline in 2024 where he has scored just 245 runs in 10 innings at an average of 27.22 with no hundred and just one fifty.

Time is running out for Kohli. Is there another fightback scripted in his career? Or is this the end of one of the greatest Test batters of the modern-era.