How Root surpassed Virat in 4 years: Focused only on Tests, benefited from England’s flat pitches; Kohli’s form deteriorated

1. Root focuses on one format only Joe Root made his Test debut against India on 13 December 2012. Within a month, he also made his ODI and T20 debut. Root continued to play all three formats till 2018, but from May 2019, the management dropped him from T20.

Root did not get many opportunities in ODIs as well, but he never missed Tests. England played 69 Tests since 2019, Root was a part of 68 of them, he could not play one match due to injury. While in these 6 years, Root could play only 50 ODIs and 4 T20s. England played 163 limited overs matches during this period.

On the other hand, Virat has been focusing on all three formats since his debut. India has played 47 Tests since 2019, Virat has participated in 37 of them, the most in the team. India has played 105 ODIs, and Virat has participated in 79 of them, the most in the team. He even played 60 of India’s 125 T20 matches. Suryakumar Yadav, who only played T20 cricket, could play only 71 matches during this period.

The difference is clear, due to playing only one format, Root is able to focus all his attention on scoring runs and centuries in Tests. On the other hand, Virat was contributing to the team in all three formats. Kohli has now retired from T20, the number of ODI matches has also decreased, so he has a golden opportunity to reach his peak in Tests.

2. England plays more Tests in a year than India England plays the most matches among the 12 Test playing countries. The team has played 10 Tests this year and they have to play 7 more Tests, i.e. 17 Tests in 2024. Since 2019, England has played 69 Tests and Australia has played 49 Tests, while India could play only 47 Tests.

Due to playing more Tests, 33-year-old Root played 145 matches in his 11-year career. Due to which he got more opportunities to score runs in Tests. Whereas 35-year-old Virat could play only 113 Tests in his 13-year career. England plays 12 to 18 Tests every year, while India plays only 8 to 12 Tests. The figures have definitely increased in the last few years, but matching England is still far away.

3. Badgeball pitches supported Root In May 2022, New Zealand’s Brendon McCullum became the coach of the England Test team. After Root left the captaincy, Ben Stokes became the captain of England. Since then, England has adopted an attacking batting approach, but for this the team also changed its home pitches. England also named it Badgeball. Till 2022, there was grass on the pitch in England, fast bowlers got help and it was difficult to score runs due to swing.

After the introduction of Badgeball, every pitch in England became flat, making runs easy and taking wickets became very difficult. Root took advantage of this and scored 7 centuries in 18 Tests at home, while he could score only 2 centuries in 10 Tests abroad. After Badgeball, Root is scoring 2 centuries in every 5 Tests in England. Earlier, he had to play 8 Tests to score 2 centuries.

On the other hand, India started changing its pitches from the England series in February 2021. In the first match, batting was easy for the first 2-3 days, and spin was helped in the last 2 days. But for the last 4 years, the ball starts spinning from the first day of the match, making it very difficult to score runs. Due to this, not only Virat but batsmen from all over the world are also yearning to score runs in India.

In the last 3 years, Virat could score only one century at home. During this time, the rest of the 87 players together could score only 19 centuries in 14 Tests. In these too, foreign players could score only 6 centuries. Whereas from 2011 to 2021, 92 centuries were scored in 48 Tests in India. That is, where earlier about 4 centuries were scored in every 2 Tests, now only 3 centuries are scored in 2 Tests. However, one thing is for sure, Virat could score only one century abroad in the last 3 years.

Root has 21 centuries in England, he scored 9 centuries in India, Sri Lanka, South Africa and New Zealand, but could not score a single century in Australia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and UAE. On the other hand, Virat scored a century in every country where he played cricket except Bangladesh. He has 6 centuries in Australia, while he has 5 centuries in England, South Africa and New Zealand. This means that if he does not get home pitches, it will be difficult for Root to reach 40 Test centuries.

4. Virat remained out of form for a long time Virat Kohli scored his 27th Test century against Bangladesh on 23 November 2019. He scored a lot of runs in 2019, but he was out of form from 2020. Centuries stopped coming in all three formats, Virat was definitely scoring runs in ODIs and T20s, but his runs stopped coming in Tests.

For 3 years and 3 months, Virat could only score 993 runs in 22 Tests at an average of 26.13. He scored 6 fifties in these, meaning Virat’s form was clearly missing. Not only was it difficult to score runs in India, Virat was also facing difficulties abroad. Then in March 2023, he scored the 28th century of his Test career against Australia, from here he also scored a century in the West Indies.

Virat started scoring runs and centuries in all three formats from September 2022. For the next 6 months, India will play 5 Tests at home and 5 in Australia. Kohli has 20 centuries to his name in both the places, so he will hardly get a better opportunity than this to get his peak form.

When Virat was out of form, Root made it a habit to score runs and centuries in Tests. Since December 2019, he has scored more than 5000 runs in 57 Tests. These include 17 centuries and 19 fifties. His average has also been around 55, which is the highest among active players who have played 20 plus Tests.

Root tops Fab-4 Test statistics On 31 August 2014, New Zealand legend Martin Crowe identified the top-4 players and called them Fab-4. These included Joe Root and Virat Kohli along with New Zealand’s Kane Williamson and Australia’s Steve Smith. Crowe had then said that all four would be the greatest batsmen of cricket in the next decade and would captain their respective teams. This is what happened.

No one is better than Virat in the ODI and T20 statistics of Fab-4. However, in Tests, sometimes Smith, sometimes Virat, sometimes Williamson and now Root has taken the lead. Till December 2019, Virat had scored the most 27 Test centuries. At that time, Smith had 26, Williamson had 21 and Root had only 17 centuries.

In the last 4 years, Smith could score only 6 and Virat could score only 2 Test centuries, but Williamson scored 11 and Root scored 17 centuries during this period. Due to which Root surpassed not only Virat but also Smith and Williamson in Tests. However, no one has proved to be better than Virat in Test captaincy.

*Graphics- Ankit Pathak.