Former India captain Virat Kohli has lately spent lesser time on the field than the time cricket pundits all over the world have spent dissecting his career. The 33-year-old batter is almost nearing the third year of his century drought in cricket.
Kohli’s century drought nearing its 3rd year
Virat’s last test hundred came in a day-night test match against Bangladesh in November 2019. Since then, while he has managed to stay India’s top-ranked batter in the ICC ODI rankings, his overall form has taken a slump. In the past 2 years, Kohli has averaged just over 35 in one-day matches. While this is not an outrageously bad statistic as such, it is somewhat hard to accept from a player of Kohli’s caliber. And this comes after putting aside his last 2 years’ stats in T20Is and tests, which aren’t much better either.
As previously mentioned, a number of cricket pundits and experts have had their say on Kohli’s plateau in form. Some have suggested Kohli take an extended break from the game. Others have, ironically, chastised Kohli for missing out on the upcoming West Indies series when he’s going through such a lean patch. Then there are others who’ve just empathized with Kohli and wished him the best luck in getting back to his usual run-scoring ways.
The latest to join the ranks of Virat Kohli commentators is former India opening batter Virender Sehwag, who believes that the problem with Kohli is that he has raised everyone’s expectations to an unrealistic level. Over on a recent segment on the Sony Sports Network, Sehwag compared- rather candidly- that how Virat Kohli’s century drought was somewhat similar to what master blaster Sachin Tendulkar was experiencing at one point in his career.
‘Kohli’s century drought similar to what happened with Sachin Tendulkar’– Virender Sehwag
“I think everybody is waiting for a hundred from him, which hasn’t come for a long time. If you take a look at his past record, he used to score a hundred in every 3-4 matches. That hasn’t happened for some time now and maybe that is why there is so much talk about it. Hum bhi ek aise khiladi k saath khela karte the jinka naam Sachin Tendulkar hai. (T: We used to play with another such cricketer, whose name is Sachin Tendulkar),” Sehwag said on the Sony Sports Network show.
“If he hadn’t scored runs for 3-4 innings, there used to be discussions, which used to reach a stage where it felt like he hadn’t scored for long. He also used to score in every 3-4 innings, the same is with Virat Kohli,” Viru further added.
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Virat’s most recent ODI innings saw him score 16 runs against England in the second ODI that India lost by 100 runs. While he looked fluent during his brief stay on the crease, this innings was yet another instance of him failing to capitalize on a good start and getting out to a soft dismissal.