Kohli’s decade

VIRAT Kohli being named among the five top cricketers of the 2010s by Wisden Almanac, the respected cricket publication, is no surprise. Kohli has dominated the 2010s like few others have, in any sport, in any decade. Kohli made 20,960 international runs in this decade. The next best? Hashim Amla, a small matter of 5,775 runs short. Kohli is the first batsman ever to go past 20,000 runs in a decade. In Indian wins, he averages a very impressive 70.76 — his average in Indian victories while batting second is a ridiculous 96.08. This figure is so high because he has remained unbeaten 46 times in 124 innings in these wins — he stays in to finish the job himself. This, in turn, means that he handles pressure like few others have — in India’s wins with him as captain, he averages 75.23. His average of 99.76 in India’s wins in chases in ODIs and T20Is makes him the best ever white-ball batsman.

Being a top cricketer, being the India captain, being married to a filmstar — this is the stuff pressure is made of. Kohli handles it well. He seems to thrive on it. As Wisden noted, his genius lies in rising to the challenge, ‘time and again’. If there was one defining year for him in this decade, it was 2014, when he scored 134 runs in 10 Test innings, averaging 13.40, on the tour of England. As he recently noted, that failure gave him ‘end of the world’ thoughts. Kohli fought back with determination and passion that have come to characterise him — on the 2018 tour of England, he made 593 runs, 459 more than four years previously.

Wisden observes that cricket ‘rarely feels more alive than when Kohli is batting’, adding: ‘Critics are divided about what Kohli’s simmering rage denotes: passion or brattishness?’ Is it youthful passion or juvenility? Either way, no other player represented, and that too with such enormous professional success, the frenetic years we lived through during this decade.