Forget those recent stats, King Kohli is one of the greatest ever to pick up a bat

If Virat Kohli had dropped a large jar of mayonnaise on his foot while preparing a celebratory sandwich on New Year’s Eve 2019, thus suffering a career-ending condiment injury at the age of 31, with his Test batting average firmly ensconced amid the indisputable all-time greats at 54.9, would we think of him differently?

Would we now consider the just-retired Indian cricketing gigastar as a greater or more significant player than the one who has just retired from Tests, aged 36, his career average having slumped to 46.8, still excellent but no longer eternally elite?

In the parallel universe in which Kohli’s egg-based-emulsion-handling skills did indeed let him and Indian cricket down at the turn of the decade, he would have consigned himself to the statistical history books with what would now be the 13th best Test career average of players with at least 50 innings, the highest for India (ahead of Sachin Tendulkar’s 53.7), and the fourth-best of any player who has played in this millennium, behind Kumar Sangakkara, Steve Smith and Jacques Kallis. The cricket world would have been mourning the premature departure of a player who, after a sporadic, inconsistent start to his career, erupted with a four-century, 692-run masterpiece of a series in Australia in 2014-15.

In 55 Tests from the start of that series to the end of the decade, he had made 21 centuries and averaged 63.6, second only to Steve Smith’s 72.5. Contracts would have been rewritten to stipulate a maximum jar weight in players’ kitchens. Elite cricketers would have been fronting sauce safety awareness campaigns. Conspiracy theories would have abounded, and cricket fans would have wistfully speculated on how India’s snack-scuppered tragic hero would surely have matched his predecessor Tendulkar’s Test record 51 centuries possibly as soon as the 2025 series in England.

Instead, since 2020, in terms of average, Kohli has been the 75th-best batter in men’s Tests, out of those who have batted 15 or more times. His 2020s average of 30.7 has him nestling in just behind Dom Sibley (31.3) and Zak Crawley (30.8).

Most players’ careers fluctuate, but few elite Test batters have ever experienced such a precipitous statistical decline. Several have taken prolonged detours through statistical mortality. Viv Richards, after his era-defining early peak, had two separate 25-Test sequences in which he averaged under 40. Adam Gilchrist, who revolutionised the batting role of the wicket-keeper, averaged 55.6 in his first 30 Tests, then 30.2 in his last 28.

There are mitigating factors in Kohli’s struggles. The 2020s has been significantly more difficult for Test batters than the 2010s.

With an overall global average of 28.6, this decade currently lies in second place in the table of Most Difficult Post-First-World-War Test Batting Decades, behind the 1950s. Last decade, all men’s Test players collectively averaged 31.1. The decline has been more pronounced in India (down from 31.9 to 25.8), and particularly for Indian players in India (down from 42.6 to 31.5).

Kohli’s long-time top-order team mates, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane, also suffered juddering numerical declines. They averaged, respectively, 49.4 and 43.7 in the 2010s, and 29.6 and 25.3 in the 2020s. Perhaps, on reflection, the BCCI should have doled out hampers of slippery-sided jarred foods as end-of-decade loyalty gifts.

Kohli has finished his career 54th on the overall Test Batting Averages (50-innings Minimum) list. He is the sixth highest averaging Indian, and 26th out of players who have played some or all of their careers in the 21st century. On the all-time list, he is a little behind 1960s West Indian Seymour Nurse (47.6), an excellent player, but one who, before finishing his career with three centuries and a 95 in six innings across four weeks in 1969, was averaging 38.8 in a bat-friendly decade.

In summary: (a) similar career averages can tell vastly different stories; (b) never trust a statistic until you have had a long conversation, and ideally a good meal, with it; and (c) if you do not judge Paul McCartney on The Frog Chorus, do not judge Virat Kohli on the 2020s.

Peak Kohli was, in impact, influence and statistics, one of the greatest players in Test history.

If anything, his vulnerabilities on either side of his period of all-format brilliance make those years more fascinating and phenomenal.

Photograph Themba Hadebe/AP