With India’s preparations for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy having reached an advanced stage, the center of attention, as always, will bear on the out-of-touch superstar batter Virat Kohli, for whom Australia has been a prolific continent for many years, given how he has single handedly put the opponents into their positions, both as a batsman and a captain, on more that one occasion. While the star batter has been adorned and worshipped as a star there, she admired him as a star previously, having the value of runs and consistency to warrant the magnitude that greets him when entering into Australian territory. However, this time along the line of play, not only is the cricketer managing to regain his resilience, he is battling for the country’s and for himself, his place in test cricket after all this with such huge change in the air after this, the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) cycle.
David Warner, the Australian star cricketer who announced his retirement from Test cricket last month, has already cautioned the team about Kohli before heading into the five-match Test series, commencing from November 22 in Perth.
“This is the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and we know Virat always steps up in Australia and completely embraces that challenge like almost no one else who has ever visited our shores. There is no better way for him to come out and shut the critics up. I am really concerned for Australian cricket, because it seems to me that he is going to come on the scene and score a lot of runs,” posed in his article for Herald Sun.
This year in 19 matches in all international formats, Virat has only managed to score 488 runs at a staggering low average of 20.33 with only two fifties in 25 innings and a highest of 76.
What I find most disturbing and disappointing is his inability to perform as expected in the longer formats of the game. As the statistics do not relate to someone of his stardom and skill set. The phase of 2016-2019 is one of the highest peaks in terms of the purest format of the game one has ever seen, 31 Tests and 69 innings later, he scored 4208 runs with an astounding average of 66.79 consisting of 16 tons and 10 fifties. It is during this time that he even scored 7 double centuries, the highest number by a captain in tests to date.
But post the year 2020, Virat has experienced a prolonged phase of boredom as far as the white jersey is concerned, with him managing to score 1838 runs at an average of 31.68 from 34 test matches, scoring only two hundreds and nine half centuries. One of the greatest batsmen of his generation will look to regain some form during the tour of Australia
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