How Bad Have Kohli And Pujara Really Been?

Virat Kohli has made 917 runs at 26.2 in his last 20 Test matches for India.

Cheteshwar Pujara has made 973 runs at 26.3 in 20 consecutive Test matches for India, until he made a 90 and a century in the 1st Test in Bangladesh recently.

This are not comforting numbers for the first choice number 4 and number 3 batters for the best team in the world, and, for India’s best ever Test team.

Fans and reporters alike are confident that Kohli and Pujara should now be discarded for good.

These sentiments reflect resentments most of the time. People want them gone. They’re confident that there must be someone better. Surely. How can 26 be an acceptable average for the number 3 and number 4 bat for India?

I looked at the record to find out how common 20 match streaks of such a low average were. I also wanted to find out if there was a way to tell if the streak was a function of the overall difficulty of scoring runs, or if it was just the player’s form. A way to do this is to consider three measures over those 20 Tests - the team’s batting average, the opponent’s batting average, and the overall cost of a wicket (taking all batters from both teams together).

Here’s what I found. These are the worst 20 match streaks (when considered by average) for all Test players who had a career aggregate of at least 4000 Test runs).

P AVE: Player’s average. (for eg. Kohli in his worst 20 match streak)
T AVE: Team’s average. (for eg. India in those 20 matches)
O AVE: Opponent’s average. (for eg. India’s opponents in those 20 matches)
M AVE: Overall match average (for eg. the overall match average in those 20 matches)

P - M: Difference between Player’s average and match average.
P - T: Difference between Player’s average and team’s average.
P - O: Difference between Player’s average and opponent’s average.

For example, AB de Villiers’ worst 20 match streak in Tests was from December 26, 2005 to November 16, 2007. He made 907 runs at 25.6. The match average in those 20 matches was 31.9 runs per wicket. The average South African bat averaged 32.1. The average opponent averaged 31.6. This meant that de Villiers was 6 runs worse (“P - M”) than the average batter in those Tests, and so on.

If we isolate the worst streaks for Indian batters, then consider that Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid and Mohammad Azharuddin, all had worse streaks than Kohli or Pujara (they were worse than the average player in comparatively high scoring conditions). None of them were dropped. And this was in eras in which, the popular view is, that the Indian batting was superior to what it is today (I do not agree that this is true).

Kohli and Pujara play in the most result oriented era since the 19th century. Bowling attacks have greater depth than they commonly had in the 20th century (and in the first 15 or so years of the 21st). DRS has eliminated pad play as an option for batters (and made finger spin a genuinely attacking option in Test cricket). Improvements in grounds and drainage and the production of pitches which support seam and spin. All this has meant that runs are harder to come by.

Perhaps the tendency to ridicule top batters because they don’t produce figures which are considered conventionally respectable is misplaced. Players are replaced in Indian team selections all the time (in 2022, India used 42 different players in a record 71 international fixtures). But the confidence with which observers assert that some player X deserves to be dropped, seems to have its basis in something other than cricketing curiosity.

If the worst 20 match streaks by Indian batters are arranged in order or how bad they were relative to their average compatriot, then ever streak except for Mohinder Amarnath’s is worse than Pujara or Kohli’s.