Numbers by themselves cannot paint an accurate picture of the transformation captaincy has brought to Virat Kohli’s game. But, being the resident statistician, it is through numbers that I unravel this facet of Virat’s career.
Captaincy came to Virat Kohli as a bolt from the blue; it was in December 2014 when MS Dhoni failed to recover from a thumb injury, and had to miss the opening Test match in Adelaide, that Kohli was first handed the Captaincy. He began with a bang, scoring hundreds in both innings of his first Test match at the helm of the team.
Two Tests later, after MS Dhoni announced a shock retirement after the third Test match, Virat again held the reigns. And yet again, he rose to the responsibility in style, and accomplished something no other captain had achieved in Test history; he scored a third consecutive century in his third innings as Indian captain.
Virat thrives on responsibility and therefore his incredible numbers as captain should come as no surprise. In the 17 matches as India’s Test captain, his batting average reads 53.92 – nearly 13 points up from his batting average when he played under other captains.
Whether it is just him maturing with age or being spurred on by the additional responsibility, Virat has developed this hunger for runs and has inculcated the habit of converting fifties to three-figure scores.
Before becoming captain, he had only scored seven centuries in 55 innings – or one every eight innings. But since becoming captain, that frequency has risen to a century nearly every four innings. To put Virat’s accomplishments as captain so far in the context of Indian cricket, only one player – Sunil Gavaskar – had scored more runs than him in the first 17 Tests as Indian captain. And the list includes some illustrious names like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, MS Dhoni, and Sourav Ganguly among others.
The marked improvement in Virat’s batting statistics are not simply restricted to his role as India’s Test captain; it is the same with him being captain of Royal Challengers Bangalore too. Since becoming RCB’s captain, there has been a drastic improvement in Virat’s numbers.
While his role in the team has definitely changed and he is now the team’s premier batsman, one has also seen remarkable consistency in his run-scoring.
One aspect of Virat Kohli’s game that numbers cannot capture is his aggressive instinct, and how it has rubbed off on the rest of the Indian team and affected results.
In his very first Test match as captain, India was faced with a fourth innings chase of 364 runs in 98 overs. Most teams would have taken the “draw-first” approach given it was the first Test of the series and given the enormity of the task; not Kohli, whose 175-ball 141 took India within striking distance. After his dismissal, India lost three wickets for 11 runs and lost the Test by 48 runs.
Recalling events around that Test match later, Virat revealed that his first official address as captain was before the start of the final day of that Test match when he suggested to the team that they pursue whatever target Australia set them on the final day. That was a statement made – then and there!
It is still early days in his tenure as captain, but if the trend continues for the next few years, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Virat Kohli will one day be India’s most successful Test captain. Happy Birthday Skip!
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