Virat Kohli Cheteshwar Pujara and the great Indian hundred drought
1.5x
1.8x
A Kohli hundred please, read a banner with a crudely cut-out picture of Virat Kohli celebrating his hundred in a white shirt. Here was his diehard, like legions of them, wishing he would end his prolonged drought of hundreds in this format, as they had during his 41 innings since the last time he celebrated a Test hundred, three and a half years ago, against Bangladesh in Kolkata. But his wish remained unfulfilled, prayer unheard.
A lot has changed between since. A pandemic raged, spreading death and fear, Pele and Maradona passed away, cricket lost Shane Warne, the world stayed indoors more than ever before, and amidst all these, Kohli has slumped off his lofty pedestal in red-ball cricket, his wait for the 28th hundred dragging on endlessly like a prime-time soap era. A hundred-guzzling machine suddenly finds its nuts and bolts jarring, its belts creaking. Not long ago, he was tearing away to break Sachin Tendulkars seemingly imperishable century of century records. But it now looks distant.
Recommended for you
I knew what I wanted to do: Grace Harris after ensuring win
2
WPL 2023: Kim Garths fifer in vain as Grace Harris explosive knock guides UP to last over win vs Gujarat
The fall is steeper when his numbers are put alongside his luminous peers, the fab-four batsmen of his time, four insuperable batsmen with different game and bringing varied thrills, four men who have for a large part of their career scored runs consistently, four equals. There was a time when Kohli was the first among the equals. When he scored his last hundred in Tests, he just overtook Steve Smithas the active batsman with the most number of hundreds. He was riding a golden, unstoppable spell of runs, parachuting to the upper echelons of batting immortality. He had just conquered Jimmy Anderson and Co in England and scored 17 hundreds across formats in two years, which now seems his peak before his plunge. Three innings before his last hundred, he cracked his highest score in Tests, a glorious double century against South Africa.
Virat Kohli in action (AP Photo/FILE)
Then, the century list of the fab four read thus: Kohli 27. Smith 26, Kane Williamson20, Joe Root: 16. Four years later, it reads thus: Smith: 30, Root: 29, Kohli: 26, Williamson: 26. Then Kohli was just 90 runs behind Root Test haul (7202 and 7292), now Root is on 10948 while Kohli has crawled to 8230, his average veering away from the 50-benchmark. Smith too has eclipsed him (8744) and Williamson is nudging on him (7787). All three of them waded through troubled times in this period (with Williamson battling tennis elbow issues), but mustered to reconquer their touch, and all three have scored runs at a 48-plus average (Root at 53, Williamson at 56 and Smith at 48), but for Kohli (25.70). In this span, Root has clearly emerged as the leader of the pack, piling on 3666 runs during the time with 13 hundreds, of them three double centuries.
The trouble of the talisman has mirrored the travails of his colleagues tooand that is a graver concern. Since Kohlis hundreds, the hundreds of his teammates too had dried up. In the last 29 Tests, Indias batsmen could register only 13 hundreds, with Rohit Sharmaand Rishabh Panttopping the order with three apiece. At home, its worse, with only five hundreds arriving in 18 innings, that is a hundred once in almost four innings. In 2022 alone, Root has peeled off as many hundreds, his colleague and poster-boy of Bazball idealism, Jonny Bairstow racked six. The tyro Harry Brook creamed four in 10 innings.
The art of scoring hundreds has deserted Pujara as well, who has managed just one century in his last 59 innings. His last hundred at home came as far back as 2017, against Sri Lanka in Nagpur. A hundred-less patch could beset most batsmen, not even Sachin Tendulkar Rahul Dravidand Brian Lara have resisted the invariable vicissitudes of form. But somehow great batsmen always find a way. As did Root two years, who failed to score one in 13 months. Its worth listening to his quotes after the hundred to get an idea of what a hundred means to a champion batsman: I tried to get away from it. For the last two years, Ive over-thought it massively made too big a deal of it in my own mind. Hyped it up and probably because of that its been to my detriment.
Kohli checked in at 12 noon at the Ferozshah Kotla, even before the Indian team arrived, and batted in the nets. Kohli hasnt scored a Test hundred since November 2019. (Express photo: Praveen Khanna)
So what ails Kohli and Co? It cannot be a temperamental issue, for Kohli has 74 international hundreds, Pujara has crossed the three-figure mark in Tests 19 times, the seventh most by an Indian batsman, more than VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly It cannot be an in-debilitating technical flaw either, these are proven batmen and problem solvers. If not, they would not have remained so long in this game without technical knowhow. Could it be a sign of slowing reflexes and dawdling hand-eye coordination? Or a subconscious tedium that comes with playing so much batting since their teens? Or is it a lapse in concentration or a case of batsmen trying too hard? Or is it the extreme nature of the pitches thats coming between them and the hundreds? That only two overseas batsmenRoot and Dimuth Karunaratnehave penned hundreds in India in the last four year, and that the home team itself has crossed 350 just thrice, strengthen the argument.
Advertisement
It could be a combination of all these factors. But for a county that is obsessed with their idols rattling up centuries and notching personal milestones, the wait for hundreds remains agonising. It takes a certain thrill out of their stadium experience, or even if they are tuning in through their smartphones. Hundred is the currency that sells the most in cricket.
Monday, March 6, 2023 at 1:54 am