Indian batting superstar Virat Kohli has been going through a lean patch by his own standards for quite some time now and his wait for a first century in more than two years continues.
And with the former India and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) skipper getting dismissed for a golden duck during the Indian Premier League (IPL) fixture against the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in Mumbai, the count for the number of matches without a century has in fact, hit the century mark.
Kohli, who has already cemented himself as one of the greatest batters the country’s ever produced, last scored a ton in the pink-ball Test against Bangladesh at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata in November 2019 — India’s maiden pink-ball Test. Kohli produced a fluent 136 against the Bangladesh attack, his knock laced with 18 hits to the fence, helping India post a formidable 347/9 declared on the board that ultimately proved sufficient for an innings win.
Virat Kohli has been going through a lean patch in IPL 2022, having scored just 119 runs so far at an average of 19.83. Sportzpics
Incidentally, it was also at the Eden Gardens where Kohli last scored an IPL ton. Kohli, who scored the last of his five IPL tons against Kolkata Knight Riders in on 19 April, 2019, smashing a 58-ball 100 that helped RCB win a high-scoring thriller by 10 runs.
The Delhi lad, however, hasn’t been the same batter since that ton against the Bangladeshis that took his century count across the three international formats to 70, and has waited for more than two years to bring up his 71st. This is, after all, the same batter who used to score centuries for fun, had anchored many a scintillating chase and had completely bossed champion bowlers such as Lasith Malinga in their prime.
Kohli, however, has found new ways to get himself dismissed and his reflexes simply aren’t what they used to be during his prime, which could have either been due to the pressure of captaincy or growing age or a combination of both. Fans would’ve hoped for his old batting form to return after he stepped down from captaincy in all three international formats as well as in the IPL, but the lean patch still continues.
This is not to say Kohli hasn’t made an impact with the bat at all; his 79 in Cape Town against a fiery South African attack earlier in January will certainly go down as one of his finest. Kohli was also in blazing form in the home series against England last year, scoring three fifties in the five-T20I series, remaining unbeaten in a couple of them, while also collecting back-to-back half-centuries in the subsequent ODI series.
However, numbers do count in the ‘Gentleman’s Game’ and for fans obsessed with numbers and milestones, the three-figure mark does matter. And after Kohli’s duck against LSG on Tuesday, here’s how Cricket Twitter reacted to the former RCB completing a century without a century:
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