Virat Kohli has played every type of cover drive imaginable. The front-foot cover drive, the back-foot cover drive, and the inside-out step-out-and-step-away cover drive. The cover drive to the cover fielder’s left, the cover drive to his right. Straight-bat, explosive cover drives, bottom-handed topspin cover drives with twirly flourishes. The edged cover drive and the middled cover drive.
However, it took Kohli until his 110th Test match to play a cover drive followed by a punch-the-air celebration when he hadn’t brought up 50, 100, or multiples thereof.
Kohli, on the other hand, was commemorating a significant occasion. He’d just struck his first boundary of the game, off the 81st ball he’d faced.
It was one of those innings. The surface for the first Test between the West Indies and India in Dominica was a slow turner with a touch of bounce for the spinners, which hampered hitters’ ability to drive the ball unless it was pitched right up or exploit the bowlers’ pace to score their runs.
So Kohli needed 81 balls to hit his first boundary, 43 balls to hit his second, and 36 balls to score his third, by which time he had already exceeded 50.
Kohli’s innings was far from flawless, with two dropped chances on 40 and 72, as well as a missed run-out opportunity on 45, but he was doing what he needed to do. After bowling the West Indies out for 150 on the first day, India was eager to bat once and bat big, and he was assisting them in doing just that. He was content to bat time, grind out his runs, and pump his fists whenever a boundary came his way.
These border celebrations were accompanied by a big grin, indicating that he was both enjoying his struggle and conscious of how mortal it was making him appear. Great batters don’t only score runs when every ball pings off the sweet spot; they often value the instances when they had to combat their own lack of fluency but still scored runs. They enjoy fighting epic bouts against the best bowlers on difficult fields, and they also enjoy days when they are their toughest opponents.
The most amazing aspect of Sachin Tendulkar’s 241 not-out in Sydney was that he shelved his cover drive on one of the flattest wickets he’d ever batted on, against a middling Australia attack. It takes a lot for one of the greatest batters of all time to admit that he wasn’t playing one of his go-to shots well enough to use it even under those conditions.
Some of Kohli’s longest Test innings in recent months and years have featured this type of self-denial, such as the 79 in Cape Town, which featured one of the highest leave percentages of any Test innings in recent times, and the 186 in Ahmedabad, where he went 122 balls before hitting his first boundary of day four. He’s been content to reduce his game to its most basic elements when necessary, practically reveling in the removal of his ego.
However, it has occasionally felt distinct from the kind of situation-specific shot-cutting that Tendulkar would occasionally perform. It appears that something has altered in Kohli’s game in recent seasons, possibly irreversibly.
Until the end of 2019, Kohli had a strike rate of 57.81 in Tests. He’s been running at 44.43 since the beginning of 2020.
This is, of course, due to his lower returns during this period – he only averaged 30.75 during the pandemic and post-pandemic eras – as well as the quality of assaults he’s faced and the bowling-friendly characteristics of the surfaces he’s batted on. Kohli is far from the only Indian hitter whose average and strike rate have dropped dramatically since the turn of the decade.
The difference with Kohli is that when he scored runs against quality attackers in challenging situations prior to the pandemic, he did so at a significant clip. Take, for example, his 153 in Centurion at a strike rate of 70.50, his 149 in Birmingham at 66.22, and his 97 in Nottingham at 63.81.
It’s difficult to say why Kohli has slowed down so much after 2020. The principles of his game do not appear to have changed significantly, but his restrictions may be limiting him today in ways they were not in his heyday. These constraints have always been apparent. He’s a fantastic puller, but he’s never had much of a back-foot repertoire on the off side; against spin, he rarely sweeps, hits over the top, or utilizes his feet to go down the pitch. In Dominica, for example, despite facing a lot of bowling from West Indies’ part-time spinners, he didn’t sweep or use his feet.
It’s possible that his eye isn’t what it used to be, and he’s not hitting his go-to shots as ruthlessly as he used to. It’s also possible that bowlers are denying him his go-to shots more effectively than they used to.
Whatever the reason, Kohli hasn’t altered his game or added new shots to his arsenal. And by refusing to change his game, Kohli has paradoxically transformed himself into a different type of player. He runs slower and possibly with less assurance than previously, but he appears to be through the worst of his thin run – he averages 48.44 this year, compared to 26.20 in 2020-22. What hasn’t changed, as Dominica shown, is how much he enjoys a brawl, even if his fiercest opponent is himself.
