MODERN CRICKET TITANS

NO TEAM SPORT ASKS MORE OF ITS LEADER ON AND OFF THE FIELD THAN CRICKET. VIRAT KOHLI AND STEVE SMITH, BOTH 28, HAVE TAKEN THE CHALLENGE HEAD-ON AND CARVED OUT THEIR PLACES AMONG THE ALL-TIME GREAT CAPTAINS

Idon’t know any game which entails such a severe and prolonged strain on the skipper, but, like the master of a ship he must exercise control and accept the responsibility,” wrote Sir Donald Bradman in his renowned book, The Art of Cricket. No team sport asks more of its leader on and off the field than cricket in its purest form. Other games may make greater physical demands of its exponents but five consecutive days of intense competition creates unbearable levels of mental and emotional stress. Virat Kohli and Steve Smith are two cricketers who have taken the challenge head-on. The two flagbearers of the modern game are not only in the form of their lives, but have also carved out their places among the all-time great captains.

The year 2017 saw Kohli and Smith, both 28, lead their respective countries to milestone victories. Kohli slammed back-toback double tons to guide India to their ninth consecutive series win in December, while Smith helped Australia regain the prestigious Ashes with his brilliant double-century in Perth.

Fans in India may not have seen Smith at his best save in a rare IPL innings or in a rarer Test win in India which his Australian team achieved before going down in the series to Kohli’s all-conquering team on its famous home run of nine series on the trot.

But when it comes to Test cricket around the globe, not even Kohli has been able to keep pace with the Aussie who is the third fastest to score 6,000 Test runs, behind only the incomparable Don Bradman and Garfield Sobers.

In 60 Tests (all stats as of January 1, 2018), Smith has scored 5,974 runs at an average of 63.55. Kohli, who has played 63 Tests, has scored 5,268 at an average of 53.75. Since January 2016, Smith averages 74.34, scoring 2,384 runs in 22 Tests. Having played a similar number of Tests in the same period, Kohli has scored 2,274 runs with a slightly better average of 75.80.

The most intriguing piece of statistics is where these two cricketers figure in the elite list of 27 captains who have scored more than 3,000 runs. The average of Smith (76.31) and Kohli (67.44) are next only to Bradman’s astonishing figures of 101.51.

Their Bradmanesque streak of form quite predictably triggered a debate over who’s the better of the two. And many former players leaned towards Smith in the Test arena while labelling Kohli as the best across all three formats of the game.

No wonder Smith’s fabulous batting has even made his opponents sit up and marvel at it. “One day teams will need to talk to Smith prior to a Test match and settle down on a number that both parties agree upon,” tweeted R. Ashwin suggesting that it’s impossible to stop Smith from scoring big. Smith’s Ashes form was so immense as to bring that comment from the offie who has had quite a few trysts with the free-scoring Aussie who thinks nothing of stepping across his stumps to whip the spinners to the on-side.

Both batsmen have a penchant for scoring big hundreds. Since 2016, Smith has blasted 10 centuries and Kohli nine. Of Smith’s total of 23 tons, 13 have come on home turf, three in England, three in India and one apiece in New Zealand, South Africa and the Caribbean. Half of Kohli’s 20 hundreds have come at home. He has found Australian soil most to his liking away from India thus far, scoring five centuries there.

As spin wizard Shane Warne recently pointed it out, the hole in Kohli’s CV on the Test match stage is in England where the swinging Duke ball had the Indian in trouble in the only series he has played there so far. Kohli struggled miserably throughout