Virat Kohli - a Twenty20 International career in decline or ascendency?

Was he finished? And then, after his blistering century against Afghanistan in the Asia Cup, was he back? Taking a deeper dive into his Twenty20 International (T20I) career numbers, it seems that maybe Kohli never went anywhere and if anything, is in a period of relatively good form, at least on the international T20 stage.

Having already stepped down as captain across all three formats and being 33 years old, it's clear that Virat Kohli is entering the final stages of his international career. 

Whilst his legendary status almost guarantees his place in the Indian setup, pressure had been mounting on Kohli after dipping form, a particularly unremarkable 2022 IPL season and a century drought for India across all forms of the game that extended to over 1000 days. 

This lean run-scoring spell caused people to ask questions about his place in the team that had previously been unthinkable and led him, ultimately, to take a 42-day break from cricket following the conclusion of the tour of England in July. ​

​As he told Star Sports in an interview, it was “the first time in 10 years that I have not touched the bat in a whole month," and it was a break that allowed him to come back feeling “light.” 

It seemed like the siesta did him a world of good when that huge innings against Afghanistan on September 8th broke the century drought and broke the doubts many had cast over his place in the side. 

The Indian selectors, for their part, have shown an unwavering commitment to him throughout.

They obviously stuck with him for the Asia Cup, have picked him for the three-match home series with Australia starting today (September 20th) and, most importantly, he’s in their World Cup squad. 

For these reasons, there is little doubt that he will play a starting role in the upcoming World Cup in October/November. But the question remains - should he? 

Diminishing Returns Raise the Alarm

Kohli will go down as one of the greatest batsmen to play the game, possibly the greatest batsman to play white-ball cricket. What’s more, he is an undisputed IPL legend for his exploits in an RCB shirt.

However, recent IPL seasons have seen him returning figures that suggest his best years are behind him in T20 cricket specifically. And as the IPL is the world's premier T20 competition, this has naturally prompted questions about his future in the Indian 20-over team. 

His IPL strike rate has dropped over the last four seasons from 141 to 121 to 119 to just 116 last season. His average has dropped, too. In the last three seasons, it has gone from 42 to 29 to last season’s 23.

To give you some bearing of those figures relative to his career, Kohli’s all-time IPL average is 36 and his strike rate, 129. So, it is clear to see that his returns have diminished over the last few seasons on a franchise front.

This dip understandably put some pressure on his position in the Indian T20 team particularly given the raft of talented and explosive batsmen that are emerging in the cricket-mad country. 

The likes of more recently internationally established stars such as Suryakumar Yadav (32), Hardik Pandya (28) and Rishabh Pant (24) have elevated the expectations of what a short-format batsman can achieve statistically and stylistically amongst India fans.

Emerging players like Sanju Samson (27), Shubman Gill (23) and Ishan Kishan (24), who all outscored Kohli at the 2022 IPL and all missed out on the India squad for this World Cup, are building up impressive cases of their own to be apart of a new batting backbone for India.

Let’s look a bit closer at his international T20 career, though, to get a better appreciation of how his career has progressed, where he stands now in terms of his relative form and whether this mounting pressure on his place in the side was warranted.

Kohli's T20I Career in Numbers

To date, Kohli has played 104 T20Is. In those 104 matches, he has batted in 96 innings. That’s a nice, almost round, figure to break down and look at in stages. Rather than looking at his year-on-year stats in calendar sets - let’s assess his career in chapters of 10 innings.

That’s nine chapters of 10 innings and one comprising his 6 most recent at-bats. As it turns out, these roughly align with his year-on-year stats as he has played about 10 T20Is each year. 

In what follows, I want to focus on three key metrics across his career. Firstly, his strike rate (SR) - the speed at which he scores. This is the average number of runs he scores per 100 balls-faced. Secondly, his average score per innings - I take this to be the number of runs he averages per innings at the crease.

This is not to be confused with the third metric I will mention, batting average (AVG) - which is a more traditional metric in cricket which tells us the average score of a batsman per out. That is, runs scored divided by the number of times a batter gets out.  

Because a batting average is determined by runs divided by outs, not-out innings skew the average of a batsman up a bit. This is especially noticeable when a batsman is not out often or when you look at a small data set.

There’s no need to spiral down the rabbit hole about all that here, though, other than to say, we will look at both Kohli’s average score and batting average in what follows to gauge his performance in more detail.

Across his T20I career, Kohli has scored 3,584 runs in 96 innings at a SR of 138.4. His average score per innings is 37.3 and his batting average is 51.9.

In the 10 so-called chapters of his career to date, his numbers have progressed as such:

Innings 1-10: 328 runs at a SR of 133.3 with an average score of 32.8 and an AVG of 36.4

Innings 11-20: 295 runs at a SR of 125 with an average score of 29.5 and an AVG of 36.9

Innings 21-30: 542 runs at a SR of 145.7 with an average score of 54.2 and an AVG of 90.3

Innings 31-40: 476 runs at a SR of 132.2 with an average score of 47.6 and an AVG of 95.2

Innings 41-50: 302 runs at a SR of 151.8 with an average score of 30.2 and an AVG of 37.75

Innings 51-60: 224 runs at a SR of 125.1 with an average score of 22.4 and an AVG of 28

Innings 61-70: 466 runs at a SR of 147.9 with an average score of 46.6 and an AVG of 77.7

Innings 71-80: 295 runs at a SR of 138.5 with an average score of 29.5 and an AVG of 32.8

Innings 81-90: 369 runs at a SR of 133.2 with an average score of 36.9 and an AVG of 61.5

Innings 91-96: 287 runs at a SR of 148.7 with an average score of 47.8 and an AVG of 71.75

Casting an eye over these figures, several observations come to the fore.

Firstly, there are little peaks and troughs in this career as in any. Secondly, there seems to be a chunk in the middle of Kohli’s career where his figures stand out just a bit more. His middle 50 or so innings, from 21st-70th, seem to coincide with his best form. This spans the years of roughly 2015-2019 inclusive and, unsurprisingly, these were the years of his best IPL seasons statistically, as well. 

What’s also apparent is that even this purple patch isn’t a million miles better than the rest of his career and that the last chapter (his last 6 innings) competes with his best periods in terms of numbers.

The starkest takeaway from these stats is, to my mind, just how consistent Kohli has been in T20Is for 12 years now. His SR mostly hovers between 130 and 150 and his average score is mostly between 30 and 50 (nice symmetry there). His batting average fluctuates quite considerably but that’s due to the number of not-out innings skewing that dramatically at times. 

Let’s even things up a bit and instead of viewing his last six innings as a chapter of his career, let's take his last 10 so that we get a more comparable slice of his most-recent form to compare with his whole career. 

In his last 10 innings, Kohli has scored 359 runs at a SR of 142.5 with an average score of 35.9 and an AVG of 51.29. 

Comparing these figures to his career record and his numbers at various stages of his career, you can see that Kohli’s recent form in T20Is is very competitive with his best years.

In fact, he is scoring at a slightly faster rate in his last 10 innings than his career SR and his average score is practically on par. These numbers read well, terribly well. Or maybe just terribly for all the other nations’ bowling attacks that might face him at the upcoming World Cup.

There might be players with higher strike rates and more adventurous styles in world cricket. Certainly, there are lots of guys with more runs under their belt this year. But despite that, there are very few, if any players, who have done what Kohli has done for the length of time he has done it in international T20 cricket. 

He has struggled to find his rhythm recently and who knows, maybe he still hasn’t quite found full form. Maybe that hundred in the Asia Cup was just a blip. When we look at his T20I career in numbers, though, it’s clear that his recent form is not that far off his best in a strictly statistical sense.

The Indian selectors have continued to back Kohli for this World Cup and it would take a brave person to write him off just yet.

One of the greatest of all time may yet have more in store and, as his career draws to its inevitable conclusion, it would be fitting to cap it off with some more silverware.

Let’s not forget that Kohli hasn’t lifted a T20 World Cup yet. Could this be the year?

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