India is set to tour Australia for a five-match Border Gavaskar Trophy, starting from November 22 in Perth followed by a pink-ball Test at the Adelaide Oval, the Gabba, a Boxing Day Test at the MCG and the New Year’s Test at the SCG.
The series will decide one of the finalists of the World Test Championship finals, which will be played at the Lord’s in the summer of 2025.
For the first time in the three editions, India’s chances look really slim. India needs four wins in five games to confirm their WTC final spot and once again the whole Indian cricket fraternity will be looking at the great man, Virat Kohli to run it back again in Australia.
They head to the series following their first series loss at home since 2012, as the Kiwis clinched the series 3-0 in India, where Kohli was only able to score 93 runs from 6 innings.
In the five Tests at home, he only accumulated 182 runs in 10 innings, raising concerns ahead of the big Australian tour.
The major cause of concern for the Indians goes beyond just the five Tests in which he was seen susceptible against spin bowling. Since the last Test he played in the 2020/21 Border Gavaskar Trophy in Adelaide, Virat has played 54 innings while only managing to score at just over 33, scoring only two centuries.
At 37 and in the last phase of his career, the battle that Virat Kohli faces is only against himself. The fitness and commitment have never been the cause of worries for him but the slowing reflexes with age, make him technically a bit frail.
With this being India’s last Test series ahead of the final of the WTC and the beginning of the new cycle, India would be looking at him to step up and reinvent himself as someone like Sachin Tendulkar did in 2010. A failure here could well be seen with raised eyebrows.
The BCCI and management would definitely want Virat Kohli to play for long but with the new cycle approaching, poor performances might as well lead to some tough calls.
However, an Aussie tour couldn’t have come at a better time for the man. The last time he was struggling big time in his career was in 2014 and that famous Border Gavaskar Trophy in Australia came where he absolutely went berserk while also taking the reins of the Indian Test captaincy midway in the series.
In his second tour of Australia in 2014/15, after top-scoring for India in his debut series in 2011/12 with a century to his name, Kohli scored 692 runs including 4 centuries and a fifty to his name. Virat Kohli was back in the runs and what led was an insane peak of 5 years. He averaged 61 in Tests in 82 innings, scoring 17 centuries and 12 fifties for 4636 runs from the 2015-2019 period while also revolutionizing India’s Test cricket.
In 2018/19, Virat Kohli led India to their first-ever away BGT series win with his captaincy and 282 runs at an average of 40.28. In the 13 Tests that he has played on Australian soil, he has always returned happily. He has 6 hundreds and 4 fifties to his name at an average of 54.
As he probably heads into his last BGT in Australia, at 37, in his happy hunting place, he would like to replicate his old antics in that fierce soil of India’s nemesis and kick start the final wind of his legendary Test career and give us some more iconic moments to cherish.
What makes me believe in him again? The answer is simple—his grit with which he has always turned the tide in his favorwhen the odds were against him.
He reinvented his white-ball game and top-scored in the 2023 home ODI World Cup with a whopping 765 runs, averaging 95.62 with 9 out of 11 fifty-plus scores. His game against pace has always been fantastic unless he flirts with the deliveries in the channel and we have seen him on countless occasions where he has stepped up when the going gets tough.
So, with the sample size that we have, we have enough reasons to back the man in the upcoming Test series down under. As it is famously said, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going.
