Despite scoring a century in the five-match series, the Indian batting great could only manage 190 runs.
After starting his Australia tour with a century, it seemed like Virat Kohli had lost his form. He couldn’t even score 40 runs in any of his subsequent innings. This was a far cry from the experience he had in England a decade ago. However, the most disappointing of all his overseas tours now seems to be this one for the Indian cricket legend.
Kohli first toured England in 2014, and it turned out to be a miserable experience. In five tests and ten innings, he couldn’t even score fifty once, managing just 134 runs with a batting average of 13.40.
Following that tour, Kohli was deeply frustrated. The failure haunted him for a long time. However, four years later, when he returned to England, he was able to put those old wounds to rest. In five tests, he scored 593 runs at an average of 59.30, including two centuries and three fifties.
Kohli’s performance in Australia had never been as poor as it was this time. On his first tour there in 2011, he scored 300 runs in four tests, with one century and one fifty. In the subsequent tour, he was unstoppable. In 2014, he scored 692 runs in four tests, including four centuries, with an extraordinary batting average of 86.50.
In 2018, he scored 282 runs in four tests, with one century. But it was during his last tour in December-January that Kohli faced his toughest time. After scoring a century in the first match of the five-test series, he got stuck in a string of failures, finishing the series with just 190 runs and a batting average of 23.75.
Kohli attended the Royal Challengers Bangalore ‘Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit’ on Saturday, where he shared how much the Australian tour had disappointed him.
“If you ask me when I was most disappointed in my career, it was the last tour of Australia. It is still fresh in my mind. So, it was the most disappointing for me,” Kohli said.
“The 2014 tour of England had caused me a lot of grief for a long time, but I don’t look at this one the same way. I may not even be on the Australia tour in four years, who knows.”
Kohli had been able to erase the disappointment of his 2014 England tour with great performances later. But it seems unlikely that the 36-year-old will get another chance to play in a Border-Gavaskar series in Australia.
“Whatever happens in life, you have to adapt to it. After 2014, when I went to England in 2018, I had the opportunity to do what I did. It might not have turned out the same way; it could’ve been another failed series. But that didn’t happen.”
