Virat Kohli's T20I legacy

Stats by Varun Alvakonda

Ringz culture has taken over sport in the last few years. Great players are not judged by what they do, but the situation they find themselves in. Cricket has always been a team sport where we can actively track the individual. 

Lionel Messi and Sachin Tendulkar are the two of the greatest players of all time in sport. But they had not won a World Cup till 2022 and 2011, and they would have been the same level of player even if they hadn't won. The trophy didn't make them better.

Virat Kohli was the Player of the Tournament in 2014 and 2016, but India lost both times. You can make a very good argument that India ran into a great Sri Lankan side in conditions that suited them and a West Indies side that dominated T20 cricket. But that’s not how fans see it. 

Even in the IPL, Kohli had a record-breaking season in 2016 where he scored 973 runs in one season. They were so close to winning the final, but they ended up just short. In the 2022 T20 World Cup, he was the top run-getter, and they lost again.

For years, Kohli was the best player of his team, yet he did not have a title to show for it. Yes, he was an ODI World Cup winner at 22 and a Champions Trophy winner at 24. But he was not the main man, despite having some crucial contributions – especially in the two finals – in those campaigns. 

So when India started losing, Kohli became one of the scapegoats. There are sometimes issues with his T20 innings, but his ODI exploits are top four ever, at least. 

This final is like Kumar Sangakkara in 2014 in many ways. The Sri Lankan great top-scored in the 2009 final with little help. Similarly, Kohli’s effort in 2014 ended up in a losing cause against Sri Lanka – who also broke a streak of losing finals. 

The parallels don’t stop, because Sangakkara had 19 runs in 4 innings before the final in 2014, and Kohli had 75 in 7 this year. They ended up performing in their final T20I match when the team needed it the most.

The visuals of Kohli and Rohit Sharma with the trophy reminded most cricket fans of Sangakkara and Jayawardene in 2014. This was the win that young India needed.

Virat Kohli is now good to a generation doubting him. But he was no better because he won that trophy. And even if he didn’t, he would still have been a hugely important player in the short history of international T20. Kohli has been at the heart of this format for a long time. 

The IPL dominates a lot of the discourse around Virat Kohli when it comes to his T20 batting. The fact that he’s been unable to win an IPL title also kept building up. 

But we need to make a clear distinction between his IPL and T20I batting record. He has a true average of 11 and a true strike rate of 2 in the IPL. On the other hand, his true average and strike rate are 25 and 11, respectively, in an Indian jersey. He is an above-par, anchor-type batter in the IPL, though the longevity argument does work in his favour. In T20Is, he is an elite run accumulator who often puts the pressure back on the opposition bowling attack.

There could be technical reasons for it – he faces more pace in T20Is than he usually does in the IPL, which suits his gameplay. In international cricket, he has deeper batting lineups to give him some Evan Gulbis effect. We have seen the same in the last two seasons of the IPL because of the impact-sub rule, as a result of which he has scored quicker even in the IPL 2023 & 2024. In general though, internationals tend to be slower than the IPL though, even more so in World Cups. His true values in the IPL are lower because he plays his home games at the Chinnaswamy, which is traditionally a high-scoring ground.

We have talked about it before that the extra pace under lights might help Kohli technically, though he is much better at setting a target in blue than in red. But what really makes him stand out is chasing – a true average of 40 and a true strike rate of 18 in T20Is, and a true average of 12 with a true strike rate of 6 in the IPL.

Clearly, he enjoys it more because it’s an equation. All you have to think about is batting and reacting to the match. It takes away the question marks. 

Speaking to Tamim Iqbal on his YouTube channel, he talks about chasing as an opportunity and not pressure. He said that they approached the chase against Sri Lanka in Hobart in 2012 – where they needed 321 runs in 40 overs – as two T20 matches. This means he saw it like an equation.

He also mentions that growing up, whenever he watched India lose in a chase, he would go to sleep thinking that he could have won it. This means there is an element of him being extra motivated when he knows the target. He says that chasing brings out joy in him, which comes back to batting being at its purest in a chase.

And we see this often with great players. You just know that in certain parts of the game, they will be at their best. Ben Stokes works when the game situation requires one of the three gears – dead batting for a draw, ODI middle overs accumulation, and T20 death hitting. Rohit Sharma is an excellent player on tough wickets, regardless of the format. 

Kohli has been not out in a successful chase 18 times in T20Is – more than Dhoni, and Karthik (though DK did not play as many games). What separates him from Dhoni and DK is that he was a top-order batter who was there at the end of games. He scored over fifty 11 of those times. Those are long innings that finish in glory. 

India had a win-loss ratio of more than 4 in the second innings in matches featuring him, and it goes down to 2 in his absence. They have never lost a T20 game when he was not out at the end of a run chase. He was not just there at the end of games, he would win the game. 

There have been some memorable wins. 

In the 2014 semi-final against South Africa in Mirpur, India needed him to get them over the line. At the other end, Ajinkya Rahane and Yuvraj Singh were scoring at almost run a ball when the target was 173. Rohit at the start and Raina at the end played good cameos, but he is the one who goes on to finish the game. The highlight of his unbeaten 72 off 44 was that he played only three dot balls.

I was there in Eden Gardens when India were 23/3 against Pakistan while chasing 119 in 18 overs in 2016. They had been in a similar situation against the same team in the Asia Cup earlier in the year, and it was Kohli who bailed them out of trouble back then. I wrote at the time that he batted like he wasn’t a carbon-based lifeform. 

And then, I was in Mohali. Again, India had lost early wickets, in a run chase, in a must win game that would take them to the semis. It was probably his best T20 innings, start to finish. Almost flawless. At no point did he look like he was out of control in the run chase. When he was batting with MS Dhoni, he ran between the wickets in a way that was almost as brutal as Chris Gayle hitting sixes.

You can see that there is a pattern in how he batted at Mirpur and Mohali. He would rotate the strike in the middle overs, even when wickets fell around him or the batters at the other end did not quite get going, and then unleash himself at the death when the required run rate demanded that. 

Look at his true values by phase in T20Is. During the powerplay, he would consolidate. He actually does not slow down as much in the middle overs for India compared to the IPL. In the final four overs, he would score at almost two runs a ball. 

The pattern makes sense now, doesn’t it? Let’s look at it by each over now. 

We have to consider that he has batted at three most of his career. He was above average in terms of speed in the 1st, 4th and 6th over in the powerplay. Till the 10th over, he has a positive true strike rate in only half the overs. But after that, he is a plus in every single over. 16th over onwards, he flicks a switch and really ups the ante. He is well above a true strike rate of 50 in the final three overs. 

Even among anchor-type batters, he is one of a kind at the end of games. He would take the game deep, but his method was different from a Dhoni or Bevan. 

If we break down Kohli’s career in 20-inning blocks, his peak was quite clearly from innings 21 to 40. This includes the two T20 World Cups, where he was the Player of the Tournament, and an Asia Cup. Remember, bilaterals were not played very frequently and were mostly just one-offs. 

At no point in his career was he negative on either true average or true strike rate. The most interesting one here is certainly innings 81-100, because this coincides with his career-worst form in general. But these also include nine innings since August 2022, which is right after he took a one month break from the game.

We see a world of difference between the two time periods here. Not only was Kohli just about par in the IPL and below par in ODIs on true average, he was also below par on true strike rates in both cases. In Test cricket, he had an average of 27.25 in this time period.

However, in T20Is he had a true average of over 20 while striking at almost 5 more than expected. So even in his form slump, his best format statistically was T20Is.

Compare that to after he came back from the break. He averages 35 (yes, 35!) more than expected in ODIs. In the IPL, his true average increases by almost 25 and true strike rate by about 10. Even in T20Is, he has had a better true strike rate even though the true average has seen a slight fall. In Tests, he averages 45.52.

His first innings since his comeback was in a T20I against Pakistan in the Asia Cup. He was dropped for zero off the second ball, but he would go on to score 35 off 34 while chasing 148. You could see that he started to get into some batting rhythm, particularly against the quicks. His 71st international 100, which broke his 3-year drought, also came later in the tournament.

Wait a minute. You must be thinking, why have we not talked about Kohli’s innings at the MCG yet?

That was an important innings in the context of his career. India had lost to Pakistan for the first time in a T20 World Cup under his captaincy in 2021. This time, India were 31/4 in the 7th over of the chase. But he kept them alive in the game, and we saw the best of him against fast bowling. When they needed 28 off eight balls, he hit two sixes off Rauf. The first one was a backfoot straight drive off a hard-length slower-ball.

Speaking of T20 World Cups, here is a look at each campaign. He was very good in 2012, had MVP-tier seasons in 2014 & 16, and was the top run-getter in 2022. He played only three innings (including a 2* against Scotland) in 2021. 

We have already talked about his greatest hits in the tournament. However, he was the player of the tournament twice, yet they did not win. In fact, Kohli’s innings, along with Rohit, at Adelaide in 2022 was a reason why. 

This time though, India made a conscious effort to change how they play the format. It started from the top with their two seniors. However, Kohli had the worst campaign of his life until the final – scoring 75 runs in 7 innings. 

But the fact is that he was willing to not be afraid to fail, was maybe even more important. He got out playing attacking shots most of the time. Before the final, coach Rahul Dravid summed it up very well by saying that when you play a high-risk brand of cricket, there will be times when it does not come off. 

That started from the second half of the IPL. He was slog-sweeping spinners, and hitting sixes like never before in the powerplay. We did a detailed piece on Cricket8 describing his IPL season.

An important aspect of this was actively trying to remove the fear of failure. He had recognized that T20 batting was different now. And this is what great players do, they look to keep up as the game evolves.

Come the final, the first over was exactly how he would have wanted. He hit three half-volleys for fours in his first five balls. But India lost 2 wickets in the next over, and another in the fifth. So he ultimately went back in his shell and looked to bat through. 

This was not his best innings, far from it. As I said, it was Schrodinger’s Kohli. His innings would be looked at differently had they not won. The same as Kohli’s career. If India lose, he’s not seen as a winner, despite the fact his batting would be no better or worse without that trophy. 

But that is not how it went. So Virat Kohli’s international T20 legacy has the silverware to go with all those great innings and two huge tournaments. Greatness comes with a tax, and Kohli was paying it for a long time. Now, he gets to cash in.