 "Virat Kohli's strike rate a concern ahead of T20 World Cup despite dream form in IPL 2024")
Looking at his numbers this season, one would assume Virat Kohli’s carried his red-hot form from last year’s ICC World Cup over to the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024. Kohli had produced one of the most dominant performances ever witnessed in an ICC event by amassing a record 765 runs in the World Cup last year, playing a central role in Team India’s perfect run to the final.
The situation is not very different in the 17th season of the IPL, where Kohli is once again streets ahead of other batters and finds himself perched firmly at the top of the run-scorers’ list with 316 runs at a staggering average of 105.33. On Saturday, Kohli scored an unbeaten 113 in Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s away fixture against Rajasthan Royals to not only become the first batter to score a century this season, but also be the first to go past the 300-run mark when none of the other batters have crossed 200 so far.
Read | Kohli hailed by netizens even as he scores slowest IPL ton on Indian soil
Kohli has managed to rediscover his form almost instantly after having not played any form of cricket for a couple of months. He was on a paternity leave for the birth of his second child, and had not been scoring big on the tour of South Africa as well as in the T20I series against Afghanistan at home before the break either.
And yet, three-time runners-up RCB find themselves at the eight spot on the IPL 2024 points table with four defeats in five matches, suffering a six-wicket defeat against RR in their latest fixture on Saturday. Bengaluru’s total of 183 hardly proved enough as Jos Buttler, whose century outshined Kohli’s, and skipper Sanju Samson helped Rajasthan chase the target down with relative ease to collect their fourth win in as many outings and move to the top of the table.
Photos | Buttler's ton outshines Kohli's as RR hand RCB six-wicket loss in Jaipur
There will be a lot of fingers pointing towards Kohli’s RCB teammates due to the fact that the rest of the team could manage just 59 runs off 48 balls — with 44 of those runs coming off skipper Faf du Plessis’ bat alone in a 125-run opening stand.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsWhat also needs to be noted, however, is the fact that while Kohli did bring up his eight century in the IPL, it was the joint-slowest ton in the IPL on Indian soil – with the former RCB captain consuming 67 deliveries to bring up the milestone. That’s nine deliveries more than what Jos Buttler needed to reach the same milestone later in the evening — a difference that is a lot more pronounced in the shortest format.
That should be a cause for concern for RCB as well as for Team India — for the Royal Challengers’ hopes of pulling themselves out of the sinkhole that they find themselves in at the moment as well as for the Indian team in their quest to end an 11-year ICC trophy drought.
Strike rate, after all, is as crucial to a batter in the shortest format as economy is to a bowler and can have a major impact not only on a player’s performance in a tournament but on the team’s fortunes as well. Sure, Kohli has had his moments in recent editions of the T20 World Cup, including and especially his memorable 82 not out against Pakistan in front of a sold-out Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2022.
But his strike rate and his old-fashioned method of approaching the ever-evolving format that is Twenty20 are what led him to walk away from the format at the conclusion of the 2022 T20 World Cup, in which India’s title hopes had been thwarted once again following a crushing semi-final defeat against eventual champions England.
Virat Kohli is likely to win the 'Orange Cap' this year. He has got a head start in terms of volume of runs. But what would Indian selectors look at ? Volume of runs or volume of runs @ permissible SR as an opener or volume of runs scored in wins? and his batting position?…
— Kushan Sarkar (@kushansarkar) April 6, 2024
India skipper Rohit Sharma too had stepped away from T20Is after that tournament for the same reason, but made a roaring comeback in the third T20I against Afghanistan with an unbeaten 121 off just 69 deliveries in Bengaluru.
Let’s also not ignore the fact that by facing 60 per cent of the total deliveries in an innings and not accelerating as much as was required of him, Kohli only increased the pressure on the batters coming in next. Even those with a reputation of teeing off from the word go such as Glenn Maxwell and Cameron Green could not make much of an impact on Saturday.
Kohli tried explaining his approach during the innings break as to why he couldn’t score as freely as he would’ve wanted to.
“One of us (him or opening partner du Plessis) had to bat till the end. I feel this total is effective on this pitch. I am not coming in with any premeditation. I knew I couldn’t get over aggressive, just that I had to keep the bowlers guessing. It’s just experience and maturity of playing the conditions,” Kohli said in the chat.
Read | 'We could have added 10-15 runs': RCB captain Faf analyses defeat to RR
The frequency with which this has been happening with Kohli in the shortest format, however, makes one wonder if it wasn’t just Saturday’s innings alone, and that this has become something of a pattern with his scoring in T20, both at the international level and in the IPL.
When compared to the exploits of Sunrisers Hyderabad’s Heinrich Klaasen or Kolkata Knight Riders’ Andre Russell, or even uncapped players such as Punjab Kings’ Shashank Singh, Kohli’s knock does lose some of its shine even if it’s a century.
That could very well be the situation when Kohli dons the blue jersey in June if he remains part of India’s plans for the T20 World Cup, putting the likes of Suryakumar Yadav, Rinku Singh and others under the pump before they even make their way out to the centre.
Fortunately for him, there’s plenty of time before he boards the flight for New York City and will have plenty of time to rework his batting strategy while attempting to revive RCB’s fortunes and get them back on track in the race to the playoffs. The 17th season, after all, carries extra significance given its proximity to a World Cup and all those hoping to feature in the mega event will surely be hoping to plug the gaps and iron out the wrinkles till then.
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