RevSportz Comment
With Australia having battled back into the ascendancy in the tussle for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, some of those who once wore the baggy green have wasted no time in putting the boot in. The 295-run thrashing in Perth seems many moons ago now, and the likes of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma are squarely in the crosshairs after three dismal outings in Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne.
Michael Slater, cavalier opener in the team that took over West Indies’ mantle as the world’s greatest side, suggested after Australia’s 184-run win at the MCG that Kohli had become something of a protected species. While pointing out that the much-trolled Rohit Sharma had scored more runs and centuries in the past five years, Slater said: “Kohli is genuinely the safest guy ever.”
He isn’t factually wrong. Over the past half-decade, Rohit has more runs (2,160 to 2,005), a better average (36 to 31.32) and more hundreds (6 to 3) than Kohli. But that’s where the comparison stops making sense. A career isn’t just a five-year stretch, and Kohli had all-time-great numbers until his post-Covid slump. Rohit, despite his heroics in white-ball cricket, has never been in the ‘great’ conversation when it comes to Test cricket.
Kohli’s nose-diving numbers do, however, make you question just how much selectors and fans alike live in the past, and how much perceptions are coloured by nostalgia. Let’s face it, five years is no blink of an eye either. Kohli has played 38 Tests in that time. His numbers are comparable to those of Pankaj Roy (2442 runs at 32.56), Ajit Wadekar (2213 runs at 31.07) and Chetan Chauhan (2084 at 31.57) – each of whom was a solid Test batsman without ever threatening to break into the highest echelon.
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Why, then, such a long rope? Or is it just the monstrous wheels of commerce in action? Our guess is that India’s cricket fans, like Marcel Proust, are In Search of Lost Time. You see, the half-decade when Kohli was king, he really was majestic, as gifted and dominant as any player the sport has seen.
He had a modest beginning. By the time he came home from England in 2014 – a dismal aggregate of 134 runs from 10 innings prompted a visit to Sachin Tendulkar in Mumbai, and some technical tweaks – Kohli averaged 39.46 from 29 Tests, with six centuries.
A few months later, he went to Australia and was a player transformed. Over the next five years and 55 Tests, he smashed 21 centuries while averaging 63.65. He proved a point against Jimmy Anderson and ‘friends’ in England in 2018, and there were sublime centuries in South Africa and Australia as well. On home soil, his batting against England in the 4-0 rout in 2016 was straight out of some video game. With the possible exception of the great Viv Richards, few made run-scoring look so easy.
It is that Kohli avatar that his admirers still cling to. We saw glimpses of it in the second innings in Perth and even during the first dig in Melbourne when a couple of drives pinged off the bat with pristine timing. But increasingly, such moments have become just that – moments. Innings of substance have been few and far between.
The great Tendulkar didn’t score a hundred in his last 23 Tests. Richards managed just one in his last 19. Once you lose it at a certain age – Kohli turned 36 in November – getting it back is near-impossible. As he heads to the Sydney Cricket Ground – where his hero made three centuries and an 80 in five Tests – Kohli will know better than anyone that time, that thief who steals from us all, is running out.
Also Read: Self-restraint the key to a Kohli revival in Sydney