Kohli has had a year to forget in 2024; he has 9 Tests to turn things around

In his, and India’s, biggest match this year, he was one of the stars of the show, with a measured, crucial, important half-century. But otherwise, Virat Kohli has failed to live up to the lofty standards he has set for 16 years in international cricket.

The former skipper’s 76, which won him the Player of the Match award, was the highest individual score at the T20 World Cup final. It was a subdued innings – he went 35 balls without a boundary at one stage – that could have proved his team’s undoing, but muscular contributions at the other end and a wonderful last five overs from Arshdeep Singh, Hardik Pandya, and Player-of-the-Tournament Jasprit Bumrah ensured that his innings-binding knock did not go in vain.

A year to forget for Kohli

Either side of his only half-century of 2024, Kohli has been a disappointment. His only Test of the year, against South Africa in Cape Town, brought him 46 and 12 on a terrible surface, while in 10 T20Is including the World Cup final, he has made just 180 runs. Extending that sequence of poor scores, Kohli’s aggregate during the disastrous three-match One-Day International series against Sri Lanka, which India lost 0-2, was a measly 58.

All put together, the 35-year-old’s returns this year in all three formats combined are 296 runs from 15 innings, with a solitary half-century and an average of 19.73. Kohli averages more than 58 in ODIs, just above 49 in Tests, and slightly less than that number in T20Is. To say that he has had a year to forget, despite his heroics in the Bridgetown final against South Africa, will be a singular understatement.

Is this sequence of scores suggestive that Kohli is on the decline? Tempting as it might be to answer in the positive, these numbers have to be placed in perspective.

Lean trot coincides with challenging pitches

A majority of those 15 hits have come on decidedly untrue decks – the two Test innings at Newlands, the three T20Is knocks in New York when he made 1, 4, and 0, and the three ODI innings in Colombo that read 24, 14, and 20. Without making excuses, it must be said that Kohli’s lean run has coincided with his run-ins with challenging conditions that would have – and did – test the best of the rest.

But Kohli will always be measured by his own exalted heights and therefore will be judged differently from the rest. In the past, he has found a way to conquer both his inner demons and those in the pitches; perhaps now, that is a bit more of a challenge.

Retired from T20 internationals, he still has two variants and plenty of cricket ahead of him to correct what his captain, Rohit Sharma, and his new head coach, Gautam Gambhir, will hope are just aberrations. It’s up to Kohli to respond in kind, to rediscover his mojo, to recalibrate his batting, and reiterate that his best is not necessarily behind him.

Master of the chase in ODIs

Especially in 50-over cricket, Kohli is regarded the master of the chase, and with good reason. Nearly 8,000 of his 13,906 ODI runs have come while batting second; he has scored 27 hundreds (out of 50) and averages 64.36 while chasing, compared to a career average of 58.18. There is something about hunting down a target that brings the best out of him. His mind ticks over like a computer, assessing gaps and asking rates and which bowlers have how many overs left and which areas to target against whom. Kohli can be a very good front-runner, but it’s when he has something to aim at that he is at his dangerous best.

Seldom looked the part in Lanka

At the R Premadasa Stadium over the last week, he had three chances to showcase that trait all over again. Each time, he disappointed, seldom looking the part. Kohli was fidgety, his timing off kilter because of the slowness of the track where the ball gripped and turned quite a bit, especially under lights, and his footwork was unusually hesitant.

Generally light on his feet and quick to get to the pitch of the ball, his lack of confidence in how the surface might behave manifested itself in him staying glued to the crease and playing the ball from that static position. That came with inevitable disaster; Kohli was trapped leg before in all three innings, for 24, 14, and 20 respectively, on the first two occasions by leg-spinners and on the third by left-arm spinner Dunith Wellalage, who like Wanindu Hasaranga and Jeffrey Vandersay, also predominantly takes the ball away from the right-hand batter.

Missing charisma

Wellalage was Sri Lanka’s hero, Player of the Match in the first ODI for an unbeaten 67 and two wickets, and Player of the Series by also backing that excellent effort with consistent displays throughout, highlighted by a career-best five for 27 in Wednesday’s series-ending contest. His haul played a big part in India being rolled over for 138, facilitating Sri Lanka’s commanding 110-run that gave them a 2-0 series triumph, their first in ODIs against India since 1997.

Of particular delight to him was getting Kohli out.

“At every opportunity, he was trying to be too aggressive and trying to pick up a fight with us when we were batting,” the 21-year-old said. “It was nice to get him out today.”

Kohli has been more animated than usual in the field, getting into verbal arguments with the opposition, hurling the ball to the wicketkeeper’s gloves without provocation, but unable to gee up the crowd like he normally does because the Premadasa was almost exclusively pro-Sri Lanka on all three nights. His intensity was right up there in the field, as always, and he made several spectacular stops, but when it was his time to walk the talk with the bat, he was found wanting. Badly.

9 Tests to turn things around

India have no more ODIs left this year, which means Kohli has a maximum of nine Tests to turn his middling-to-poor 2024 around. Five of them are at home, between September and November, against Bangladesh and New Zealand; the other four will be in Australia in November-December.

Australia has always brought the best out of Kohli, the scrapper, right from his first Test tour Down Under in 2011. For him to be switched on and firing on all cylinders in a country that loves to hate him, but also paradoxically loves to love him, Kohli must return to run-scoring ways in the five home Tests. No one knows that better than the man himself.