Will Virat Kohli ever come back to form? Or has he ever been terribly out of form? – We take a look at his career graph and try and find the answers for you.
New Delhi: Former India captain Virat Kohli’s recent lack of form has sparked a debate in the cricketing world with many questioning his technique while others feel it is just a matter of time before he gets back to form. The last time Kohli scored a hundred in international cricket was three years back in 2019. But even without scoring a hundred in the past couple of years, Kohli has not been awfully out of touch as many made it look in the recent past.
Having made his debut in 2008 in the shorter format of the game, Kohli has so far scored 8043 runs in 101 Test matches and 12311 runs in 260 ODI matches. The 33-year-old has 27 Test hundreds and 43 ODI hundreds. Now, let’s break that number year-wise.
List of Virat Kohli Test match Record
| Year | Match | Runs | 100’s | Average |
| 2011 | 5 | 202 | 0 | 22.44 |
| 2012 | 9 | 689 | 3 | 49.21 |
| 2013 | 8 | 616 | 2 | 56.00 |
| 2014 | 10 | 847 | 4 | 44.57 |
| 2015 | 9 | 640 | 2 | 42.66 |
| 2016 | 12 | 1215 | 4 | 75.93 |
| 2017 | 10 | 1059 | 5 | 75.64 |
| 2018 | 13 | 1322 | 5 | 55.08 |
| 2019 | 8 | 612 | 2 | 68.00 |
| 2020 | 3 | 116 | 0 | 19.33 |
| 2021 | 11 | 536 | 0 | 28.21 |
| 2022 | 3 | 189 | 0 | 37.80 |
Virat Kohli Record in One-Day Internationals
| Year | Match | Runs | 100’s |
| 2008 | 5 | 159 | 0 | 31.80 |
| 2009 | 10 | 325 | 1 | 54.16 |
| 2010 | 25 | 995 | 3 | 47.38 |
| 2011 | 34 | 1381 | 4 | 47.62 |
| 2012 | 17 | 1026 | 5 | 68.40 |
| 2013 | 34 | 1268 | 4 | 52.83 |
| 2014 | 21 | 1054 | 4 | 58.55 |
| 2015 | 20 | 623 | 2 | 36.64 |
| 2016 | 10 | 739 | 3 | 92.37 |
| 2017 | 26 | 1460 | 6 | 76.84 |
| 2018 | 14 | 1202 | 6 | 133.55 |
| 2019 | 26 | 1377 | 5 | 59.86 |
| 2020 | 9 | 431 | 0 | 47.88 |
| 2021 | 3 | 129 | 0 | 43.00 |
| 2022 | 6 | 142 | 0 | 23.66 |
There is no denying that the the past three years has been tough for Virat Kohli but then again that is by the standards set by him. His Test average in the past three years has been way below as compared to other years but even there we should only consider 2021 as one bad year. The year 2020 saw him play 3 Test matches for India and as many in the current year. No criteria to judge any player based on three Test matches, let alone Kohli.
The ODI average, however will indicate and vindicate that even without scoring as many runs, King Kohli has been able to maintain a healthy average with the current year being his worst in his entire career. With another six months to go for the year to end, that will be end anywhere close to his previous two years even without the former India captain not being among the runs as many would call it.
Point well taken that he has not scored a century in the past 3 years as Mohammed Shami in an exclusive interview with india.com earlier in the year had said but also went on to add that it doesn’t define a player. “So what, if he (Kohli) has not scored a century. A century doesn’t define how big a player he is. It is not that he has not scored runs. He has scored fifties consistently in the recent past and there is no reason why we should even think like that. A fifty or a sixty is also a score and as long as it is helping the team, there is no reason to complain,” Shami had said.
Former India opener and the current head coach of Bengal, Arun Lal probably hit the nail on the head by making a point that most of us fail to understand or forget easily. The man himself has set such high standards for himself that anything less than that is considered as a failure. And in a world as competitive as Virat Kohli’s, it is almost impossible to replicate that year after year.
“Virat Kohli has set such high standards for himself and the world. They are impossible to continue with. You can’t expect him to perform like that for 15 years. There is bound to be dips and ups, you know, and I am not worried about him since he is such a game-changer and fitness freak and everything else. So I am not really worried about that, to be honest.,” said Lal in an exclusive interview with india.com.
Former India captain Mohammad Azharuddin was the latest to join the debate and his opinion wasn’t much different from any of the other two cricketers – Shami & Lal as mentioned in the article above.
“With Virat Kohli, what happens is that even if he scores a 50, people say he has failed,” Azhar was quoted as saying by Khaleej Times on Friday. “I think it happens to every cricketer, even the best of the players have gone through these lean periods,” opined the 59-year-old.
“There is nothing wrong with his technique. Sometimes you also need a little bit of luck. If he gets one big score, a big hundred, the aggression and the confidence will come back,” added Azhar.
Kohli has been scratchy off late and may not be in the best of nicks but it doesn’t take much for a player of his calibre to roar back to form. Even the great Sachin Tendulkar wasn’t the same player in a career spanning 24 years, where he had to change his game multiple times. Sometimes because of injury, other times because the situation demanded such desperate measures. Remember Sydney 2004.
