Poor form or something deeper: What’s ailing Virat Kohli?
MUMBAI/KOLKATA: That Virat Kohli is in a rut isn’t news anymore. His Indian Premier League (IPL) slump, too, is not news; it is something that he and other top players have experienced before. What is unsettling is his manner of dismissals, and the despair his wry smile fails to hide while he is at the crease. The IPL was Kohli’s comfort zone, a domain where he was considered infallible, insurmountable, assured of runs, fame and legacy, despite his team not winning it once.
But here is how this season is going for him.
After Wednesday’s innings against the Chennai Super Kings, he aggregates 216 runs at an average of 21.6 and a strike rate of 111.92 , with just one fifty (58). To give it context, Kohli’s worst
IPL season average before this was back in 2008 (15), and worst strike rate was in 2012 (111.66). Only twice since 2011 has he aggregated less than 400 runs in a season, but always with at least two fifties. And it’s not about the numbers alone. What takes us into uncharted territory is how lost he is looking during his dismissals.
Bowled trying to flick a classic off-break, yorked making space for himself, caught at backward point, caught at wide slip, and then, caught again at backward point — Kohli seems to be getting out in ways that he never did before. Even during his innings, he is either not finding the sweet spot or taking far too long — his strike rate dropped to 90 on Wednesday and 109 in the 58 before that — to find it. That’s not something you see every day with a player of his calibre. Many greats have dredged deep and scrounged for runs, but Kohli looks to be tipping over to a point from where he needs to do something drastic to rediscover his touch.
Ravi Shastri and Kevin Pietersen have advised Kohli to take a break. Former India captain Dilip Vengsarkar—who gave Kohli his first India break as chief of selectors — feels that he must hit rock bottom to bounce back. “There might be a day soon when he scores runs and gets his confidence back,” said Vengsarkar, adding that he doesn’t think Kohli needs to take a step back and check his technique. “I don’t think there is a technical issue, he has played for so many years. Scoring runs is basically how you adapt to the situation and conditions. What happens is, if you are not scoring, it weighs on your mind. The game is all about confidence, which comes whenever you score.” It doesn’t help if you have a string of low scores, especially in T20 where there is no time to get your eye in, feels Vengsarkar. “So, he has to take risks of playing shots even against the moving ball.”
Kohli has tried that too, but to no avail so far. In fact, Kohli takengland ing risks for runs has been a recurring theme this IPL—BE it in going after Lucknow Super Giants’s Dushmantha Chameera first ball after Anuj Rawat had been dismissed, or edging leftarm pacer Marco Jansen to second slip, or even getting run out twice. This trend is in stark contrast to the remarkably simple and effective template he has stuck to for a long time — weed out risk by rotating the strike and keep topping off the innings with grounded boundaries in the ‘V’. That’s how he aggregated 973 runs in the 2016 IPL before finishing second on the T20 World Cup’s scorers list (273 runs) at an average of 136.5.
Cut to 2022, though, and when you find Kohli scanning fine-leg completely unaware that Riyan Parag is readying to catch him at backward point couple of innings back, you know something is amiss.
So what is ailing Virat Kohli? Is it a loss of faith or just extended misery? Is it a technical error leading to poor form, or something deeper and more ominous?
Let’s not forget the mental grind Kohli has to bear — the face of Indian cricket’s economic health; adorning billboards; pasted on the wall of every aspiring cricketer; a walking, breathing, talking equivalent of a country’s cricketing pulse. And all that he has had to endure in recent months — sparring with the BCCI in public, showing himself out as skipper in strange circumstances that suggested he was cut out rather than eased out.
Somya Awasthi, a Bangalorebased sports psychologist who helped the India women’s hockey team prepare for the 2020 Olympics, says sporting performance is affected by a combination of factors. “When we are talking about professional sports, there are four basic aspects: technical, physical, tactical and the last one is the mental aspect. We can’t say that only one thing is affecting the game, it usually doesn’t work like that”.
“All these four things actually work hand in hand. For example let’s just think about the physical aspect of it. How many times we say that the form is not okay, or strength conditioning (fitness) is not good. That is also affecting the game of the player but then that not being up to the mark is also affecting them mentally. Maybe there is an amalgam of different things happening together which affects an athlete’s performance. To say, only one thing is having an effect will not be fair.”
Kohli has set a platinum standard in fitness, channelled aggression through a set of skilled fast bowlers, and expertly set up Test victories in Australia, and South Africa. As long as he is on the field, he strives to have the last word. So the physical and tactical facets are more or less sorted, and unlikely to be the problem.
That leaves us with the technical and mental aspects of Kohli’s game. And they are undeniably intertwined.
Mental well-being expert Anand Chulani, who has worked with Rajasthan Royals in 2018, says Kohli has the ability to come out of this rut. “You don’t achieve what Virat has achieved without being extremely mentally strong. Whatever space he is in, he will get out of it. Only Virat Kohli will know what the real challenge is. Whatever it is, only Virat will know. He is too good a player and too much of a champion to stay in this space.”
Awasthi, however, contends there could be a technical aspect to this slump. “If you have missed out on a technical thing then that will affect the mental side; if your mental side is not okay it might have an effect on your tactical skills; maybe you are not able to take decisions properly or you are not able to pay attention. All of your cognitive functions may be getting affected.”
Kohli has been the most certain batter of our generation. For him, there are no half measures, be it in leaving the ball or attacking it. Yet, when you see T20 captains deploying slips and fielders in the leg against him — strategy normal to Tests— you start wondering if there is more to his rut than what meets the eye. Perhaps they have realised that Kohli’s early-innings off-side fragility isn’t Test-specific, after all. Former India manager Lalchand Rajput, with whom Kohli had worked for two weeks to sort out his off-side issues after his infamous 2014 tour of England, said Kohli was forced to play on the off-side after his leg-side shots were cut off.
“The leg side is blocked and they are bowling on the fourth stump,” Rajput told HT after the South Africa tour earlier this year when Kohli was caught behind or in the slips all four times. “Again, with his initial movement, he wants to come on the front foot a lot. If you come on the front foot and the bowler bowls short of a length outside off-stump, there is less chance of getting scoring shots.”
Considering the spate of dismissals outside off-stump, it’s been easy to wonder this season if Kohli’s IPL career is following a similar trajectory. Then came that fifty last week, followed by a 33-ball 30, but neither was convincing.
In a new world where Kohli isn’t a leader in any format or for any team, he is still a figurehead Indian cricket needs. But since push is turning into shove, will he feel there is a need to switch off and go into self-repair mode?
Sachin Tendulkar did that with zen-like discipline in Sydney, 2004, playing no shot on the off to carve a masterful 241 that redefined his career. Brian Lara resigned from West Indies captaincy in 2000, took a sabbatical, and came back to score the world record 400 four years later.
Like them, perhaps Kohli needs to find his own path.