JOIN USKohli needs to find a way out of slump
Shubman Gill looked compact, calm and in control during his brief stay in the first innings of the Indore Test. Having replaced an underfire K L Rahul, he betrayed few signs of nerves with a couple of exquisite drives. But that was only till the pacers were operating from either end, and that wasn’t for far too long.
The right-hander was dismissed off the second ball he faced from left-arm spinner Matthew Kuhnemann for a good-looking 18-ball 21. There was a moment of deafening silence, which soon gave way to a raucous roar. Of course, the crowd weren’t celebrating Gill’s fall; they were just too excited to see Virat Kohli walk into the middle at No. 4.
Kohli may not be the same batting force that he was not too long ago but his body of work is so imposing across formats for over half a decade starting 2013 that he still
commands the same adulation and carries similar expectations.
He has successfully turned it around in white-ball cricket with heaps of runs in the last few months, but his red-ball fortunes have progressively gotten worse.
In fact, Kohli’s career can be divided into two categories -- pre-Covid and post-Covid (see the table). From his debut in 2011 to the end of 2019, when his last Test century came in Kolkata against Bangladesh, he had scored 7202 runs in 84 Tests at an average of almost 55 (54.97), with 27 hundreds and 22 half-centuries.
From the start of 2020, which began with a Test series in New Zealand, to the Indore match last week against Australia, he has managed just 1028 runs in 23 Tests at 25.70 and with six half-centuries. In fact, he has gone without a half-century for 15 innings since his 79 against South Africa in Centurion.
During this phase, Kohli’s career average has plunged to 48.12, shaving off nearly seven runs (6.85) per innings.
That’s massive and few would have survived this kind of slump. Just ask Rahul, the only Indian batter with two hundreds in two different continents.
While it may seem like different standards for different players to a harsh analyst, Kohli’s case should be looked at with greater empathy, for he has earned that right with a run that threatened to wipe off most records in the cricket books.
And it’s not like the 35-year-old has looked all at sea even during his short stays at the crease. Whether it was his 44 in Delhi in the first innings or 22 in the first hit here, he looked assured. The big one has looked round the corner every time he gets a start but each time, it has ended in agonising disappointment.
It doesn’t seem to be a technical flaw, for he hasn’t looked in too much trouble. Is it the inability to sustain the same intensity for extended periods when the ball is doing so much? Perhaps yes. Skipper Rohit Sharma, without specifically mentioning any name, pinned it down to a lapse in concentration.
“The lack of concentration is what I will put it to,” he said when asked about batting slumps.
“At the end, you have to apply yourself. Bat as long as possible, take your odd chances in the middle. Do not let the bowler bowl six balls on the spot. Even if he’s wanting to bowl there, you have to try and do something different.
“That is something we didn’t do in this game, both the innings. We allowed them to bowl in one spot, so that is where I think we made a little mistake and we’ll correct that, come the Ahmedabad Test match,” he reasoned.
Kohli has gone through a lot during the last couple of years. His slump in form has coincided with him losing captaincy in all three formats. Even for someone so tough, it’s too much to cope with but he needs to find a way out of this rut, and soon.
The Delhite visited the famous Shree Mahakaleshwar temple in Ujjain near here along with his actor wife Anushka Sharma on Saturday morning to offer puja.
Perhaps, he needs divine blessings to come out of this prolonged slump.
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