Year in review 2017: Breakdown of Virat Kohli's barnstorming year in numbers

Another year has come and gone with the all-too-familiar sight of Virat Kohli asserting his dominance across formats.

He started the year by racking up centuries and ended 2017 by scoring double hundreds almost at will, thereby reasserting that consistency is indispensable in any field to become successful.

With the skipper on song, India’s performances too blossomed throughout the year as the Men in Blue ended up winning the second most number of matches in a calendar year across formats — 37 (in 2017). Kohli led from the front to help India escape from difficult situations and also took firm steps in becoming India’s most successful Test captain.

He befuddled England in India’s first ODI of 2017 when the chips were down at Pune by playing a match-winning stand alongside Kedar Jadhav. Kohli, with his audacity while batting, can be unfair on opposition bowlers. The short-arm jab which he played against Chris Woakes in the Pune ODI was easily the best of the year.

Then he played five international innings without scoring a century. The standards he has set for himself over the years are so high that if he does not score a ton in eight or ten innings, people start talking about his form. But he sure knows how to silence his critics with the bat — just like he did with his double century against Bangladesh at Hyderabad.

If there was one series that Kohli would like to forget in 2017, it would be India’s Test series against Australia, where he amassed just 46 runs from five innings. But soon after that he led India to the ICC Champions Trophy final.

The series against West Indies and Sri Lanka were not walks in the park for him but he fought and scored runs. India showed Australia who’s the boss in ODI cricket afterwards and against New Zealand, both in ODIs and T20Is, Kohli was unstoppable.

He began his last Test series of the year with a duck but it’s always about how you finish the battle. Now see his next four scores after that duck in the series — 104*, 213, 243 and 50. He made batting look so easy that it forced onlookers to say that he is from out of the world.

Here’s a look at another one of his dominant years in international cricket through some numbers. Kohli’s average of above 70 in both Tests and ODIs in 2017 and his strike rate of above 150 in T20Is proves that 2017 was really Kohli’s year.

Kohli bettered his tally of runs in 2017 by scoring 2818 runs which is the most by him in a calendar year across formats.

His average was little a bit lower than 2016. However, it still was above par than most of his years in international cricket in 2017.

Kohli scored 726 more runs than the second highest run-scorer in 2017 which again proves his supremacy in 2017.

There is only one captain who has scored most runs than Kohli across formats in a calendar year —Ricky Ponting, who amassed 2833 runs from 58 innings in 2015 while the Indian fell just 16 runs short of the record.

Kohli was the only batsman to score 1000-plus runs in both ODIs and Tests in 2017.

Kohli was the only batsman to score more than 10 centuries in international cricket in 2017.

Other than Kohli, no other captain took his team to over 20 wins in 2017 across formats.

He also made it a habit of winning awards in international cricket as he won 10 awards in international cricket in 2017 which was the most by any player.

Kohli is the only captain from the below list who has scored 2000-plus runs in a calendar year across formats with a strike rate of 80-plus.

With such a barn-storming year behind him, Kohli will be keen to prove himself once again outside Asia as India begin a testing series against South Africa.