It is difficult not to sympathise with Virat Kohli. He is an all-time great who has given his heart and soul to RCB, the only team he has played for since the inaugural year in 2008. But cricket is not a one-man game; his franchise continues to let him down. He has scored 38% of RCB’s runs so far, which tells its own story.
More significantly for Kohli, the format seems to be evolving faster than he is. He cannot be both anchor and destroyer in the same innings. When he took 67 balls to get to his century against Rajasthan Royals, it was the slowest in the IPL. Later he said the plan was for one of the openers to bat through the innings after the other fell. This is 50-over thinking.
RCB haven’t got their team or their tactics right in 16 years. In the inaugural year, their batters were Rahul Dravid, Wasim Jaffer, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Jacques Kallis. Fabulous Test players, but not men with the six-appeal crucial for T20. Kohli was 19 then, and the only one capable of change. In 2016, his magical year, he scored 973 runs at a strike rate of 152 with four centuries.
