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India's Virat Kohli Shows That Form Is Temporary but Class Is Permanent

Richard Morgan@Richiereds1976X.com LogoContributor IOctober 21, 2014

Keeping his eye on the ball: India batting star Kohli
Keeping his eye on the ball: India batting star KohliGareth Copley/Getty Images

One man who would have been especially disappointed to have seen West Indies’ tour of the subcontinent ended prematurely was Virat Kohli after the Indian star’s belated return to form with the bat in the recent one-day internationals against the men from the Caribbean.

Kohli had entered this month’s ODI series under some pressure after a particularly lean patch in England last summer in which the silky-smooth batsman had amassed just 134 runs in 10 Test innings at a paltry average of only 13.4 and a highest score of 39.

And the right-hander then found the going equally tough in the one-day series that followed, compiling a mere 54 runs in four internationals at 18, with not a half-century in sight in any of the nine matches he played in those two forms of the game.

So what relief for Kohli earlier this month when on his home ground, the Delhi-born batsman made his first fifty for 15 knocks in either 50-over or five-day cricket—a run stretching back to February—as India won the second ODI against West Indies.

Not only that, though, but Kohli then followed up his 62 in the Indian capital by turning in a man-of-the-match display while scoring a 20th one-day hundred in Friday’s fourth game in Dharmasala (see video), as the home team turned around a 1-0 deficit to take a 2-1 lead in the series.

However, the fact that the 25-year-old is suddenly now back in the runs will not have surprised too many people, as Kohli has always appeared a man more at ease in the helter-skelter environment of the one-day arena, as opposed to the confines of Test-match cricket.

And one of the reasons that the player’s free-flowing game is more suited to the cut and thrust of ODIs, where it can flourish more, is that in that form Kohli’s glaring technical weaknesses outside off stump against the moving ball are exposed far less often, especially on the flat pitches of the subcontinent.

But it is not solely the change from red-ball to white-ball cricket that is behind the batsman’s sudden return to form, as Kohli struggled badly in the one-day series in England in August and September as well.

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It is that Kohli has also been given some much-needed time in order to go away and work on those obvious issues in and around the corridor of uncertainty, something that in the increasingly hectic modern-day schedules international batsman simply cannot find time to do while on tour.

And with India playing five Tests in the space of a little over five weeks last summer, Kohli was forced to correct his faults out in the middle invariably against James Anderson armed with a new cherry, and with a ring of slip fielders waiting to pounce on any little mistake.

However, since returning home at the start of last month, Kohli has been able to go away and work on his game in the nets, something he touched upon after registering his 31st ODI fifty at the Feroz Shah Kotla, per ESPN Cricinfo:

I've worked hard over the past two weeks, during which I've attended two different camps and concentrated on the areas I have to improve on.

It's very easy to let it [getting out the same way] affect you but I choose not to. At times, it does play on your mind and this is where as batsman you go back to the basics and improve.

At the end of the day, it's all about the mental confidence and letting your instincts take over. Having that break was really good. I got to work on my game and went in this ODI series with a positive mind set.

And yet there are far sterner challenges awaiting Kohli this winter following Sri Lanka’s hurriedly arranged visit to the subcontinent next month to play five one-dayers, specifically a four-Test tour to a revitalised Australia over Christmas.

As facing the distracted bowling attack of the world’s eighth-ranked ODI team on a flat Indian surface is no real gauge of whether Kohli has indeed returned to the sort of imperious form with the bat which had seen him rise to as high as eighth place in the International Cricket Council’s Test-match batting rankings only last February.

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But come through that exacting trip Down Under with runs in the bank and his reputation further restored, Kohli can start looking forward to next year’s World Cup with renewed optimism.

And it would be no great surprise were the second-rated one-day batsman in the world at present to play a starring role for the holders in the tournament to be held in Australia and New Zealand in February and March.

However, not only in the 50-over game going forward, though, but in the Test arena, too, with Kohli keen to remind his growing number of doubters of late about his worth to India not just in one-day cricket.

“They [the critics] tend to forget my contributions in the last four-five years. I've been scoring consistently in all three formats of the game,” he said recently after his belated return to form.

No one, though, will be criticising Kohli anymore if he continues plundering runs like he has done these past two matches against the West Indies.