The Indian cricket team will have two leading desires heading into the 15th edition of the Asia Cup in the UAE. Defending the title they won in 2018 will be a priority for Rahul Dravid and Rohit Sharma as the Men in Blue fight for continental pride against their age-old rivals, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
However, in reality, this tournament is just an extended warm-up leading to the upcoming T20 World Cup in Australia and a return to form for India’s two batting superstars, Virat Kohli and KL Rahul, may be higher on the wish list for the management. Rahul has had a tumultuous time since the conclusion of the 14th season of the IPL, undergoing surgery for a sports hernia before suffering a complicated recovery that included a bout of Covid-19.
Kohli, on the other hand, is in the midst of the biggest ebb of his cricketing career. The former Indian captain has looked a shell of himself in 2022, devoid of confidence and runs amid a string of failures in all three formats. Kohli averaged a paltry 22 runs per wicket in IPL 2022 and followed that up with an equally disappointing tour of England, where he failed to pass a score of 20 in seven innings.
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Kohli’s scoring rate, hitting range and performances in the T20 format have come under scrutiny since 2019. The RCB star has had a season strike rate of 121, 119, and 116 in the IPL in the last three campaigns, and his shortcomings against away spin have been exposed by opposition teams.
Considering his achievements and performances in India blue over the past decade, Kohli has rightly received a free pass and an extended rope in the team. However, with another ICC event on the horizon and the pressure to perform gradually heating up, the 33-year-old will need to show signs of a revival in the upcoming Asia Cup.
Burnout and the non-stop nature of the schedule could explain Kohli’s unexpected dip in form in the lead-up to IPL 2022. But the Indian superstar has been afforded significant downtime since then, playing only five international matches in the last 90 days following RCB’s elimination from the IPL on the 27th of May 2022.
Like most multi-format stars, Virat was given a break for the home series versus South Africa and missed India’s tours to West Indies and Zimbabwe. Although the mental pressures and fatigue of a 15-year-career at the highest level are unlikely to be washed away with a one-month break from the sport, the BCCI have catered to Kohli’s request to switch off ahead of the marquee tournament of the year.
Returning to the team following his break, Kohli must arrest his slide as a force in T20 cricket and make a few technical corrections. Unlike KL Rahul, Kohli’s failure in the shortest form of the game in the last three years has been down to his technical limitations rather than intent. For RCB and India in 2022, Kohli has been proactive at the crease and adopted an attack-first approach.
Bowling Type | Runs | Balls | Avg | S/R | Dot % |
Left-arm Spin | 59 | 51 | 59 | 115.7 | 29.4 |
Leg-Spin | 108 | 108 | 27 | 100 | 23.1 |
Off-Spin | 29 | 32 | 29 | 90.6 | 25 |
Virat Kohli T20I record vs Spin since 2020
However, this methodology is yet to bear fruit as his dwindling hitting range against spin has limited his scoring opportunities through the middle overs. The 33-year-old has refrained from using his feet against the spinners like he did in his pomp and has also been a tad slow picking up the length, leading to strike rates below 120 against the slower bowlers as you can see in the table above.
This lack of hitting range against the slower bowlers has a knock-on effect on how he plays the pacers. As witnessed in the IPL, Kohli is forced to take more risks against the quicks to make up for his inability to smash spinners, which in turn, costs him his wicket.
Although this weakness will be masked on the flat Australian pitches at the World Cup, Kohli needs to find repeatable scoring opportunities against the ball turning away from him or be paired with batters that take the boundary pressure away from him against the spinners, such as Pant or Suryakumar Yadav.
Considering his pedigree and capacity to bounce back from troughs in his career – such as the 2014 tour of England – there is no doubting Kohli’s ability to return to the peaks he previously touched across the past decade. True champions are born out of adversity, but the credit in the bank is starting to run low for Virat Kohli, and if there was ever a moment for him to prove his doubters wrong one more time, it is now.
[Featured Image Credit: ANI]
Shivaan Shah