The Virat Kohli conundrum: What is bad form?
The quality and quantity of runs that made India's batting stalwart a sight to behold has deserted him in the last three seasons. What is Kohli battling, and will he emerge from the prolonged dip in the Asia Cup ODI tournament starting this weekend?
We’ve all heard about the zone. The mythical state where almost everything you touch seems to turn to gold. Time slows down, everything hits the middle of the bat, the ball miraculously always finds the gap, the pitch is taken out of the equation, the bowlers are little more than bowling machines and even predicting the future (as Sachin Tendulkar did during the 143 against Australia at Sharjah in 1998) seems possible. This tunnel-vision phenomenon sees sportspersons at their absolute productive and creative best.
Conversely, we’ve all heard about bad form too. Most of the conversation around the topic has centered around Virat Kohli. The former Indian skipper dominated world cricket, across formats, between 2014 and 2019 but has since seemed like a shadow of himself. The runs haven’t come, luck hasn’t gone his way, the mind has felt burdened and he seems like a perfect example of Murphy’s law — anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Kohli, on his part, hasn’t acknowledged that he is in bad form. The Indian team management too has said that the 33-year-old has looked good in the nets and his fitness is top-notch as well. But the lack of runs has its own story to tell—if this isn’t bad form, then what is?
If anything, it makes one wonder what bad form looks like to the mind of a cricketer. You stick to your regular routine, you try to sleep right, eat well, practice hard but the runs/wickets just don’t come your way. Does it drive the player to desperation? Does desperation lead to more mistakes? Does the mind break first or is it the final straw?
And as AB de Villiers told HT, there is no clear answer to the question but perhaps it comes down to belief. If you believe you are in trouble, then you are.
“It is a difficult question,” said de Villiers. “I can write a book on it. I don’t have a quick answer for you to be honest. I can’t cover all the things I believe in with regards to bad form. It is a very difficult balance; it is almost a cat and mouse game when you have a good and bad form.”
De Villiers added: “There is a very fine line between being in bad form and you actually starting to believe you are in bad form. That’s the dangerous part when the individual starts believing that you are not playing well or there is something wrong, that is when there is really an issue. There is a fine line and you have always got to battle it, there’s always a challenge to make sure you keep your head above water and never fall into that hole where you actually start believing yourself that you are in bad form.
"It is a big mental battle; it is also a balance between putting in the hard work and keeping your mind fresh. It’s a difficult one, we have all been in bad patches. It is inevitable as long as you keep believing that you can get out of any kind of situation, you should be fine, but it is not easy. It is a tough game.”
For now, at least publicly, Kohli has kept the faith… in himself and his method. But as former Australia opener Matthew Hayden had once pointed out, bad form makes you overthink everything. Even the most natural movement is scrutinised and that scrutiny leads to doubt which, in turn, leads to the player second-guessing everything.
“Good form and bad form are a little bit like driving a vehicle, Hayden told ESPNCricinfo in 2016. “When you are in good form, you drive from A to B in two hours which feels like two minutes, because you are in the flow, you have your stereo pumped up, you are comfortable with the seating arrangements, the climate within the car, you have some banter in the car if you have travelling guests etc.”
Hayden further added: “Bad form is like the same trip, but now you're being tailgated by a police officer. You suddenly become aware of pretty much everything in your conscience. Am I too close to my fellow drivers? Am I indicating correctly? Is my speed limit correct? It is all of those thought processes, which if you were to relate to batting would be - Am I watching the ball? Is my body position excellent? Am I moving according to the conditions? Inevitably, you get out in the process, you are stuck in the mindset of analysis by paralysis.”
The good part about all of this is that Kohli is not alone. Every cricketer worth his salt has gone through a bad patch. It is par for the course. So, this poor run of form is not unique but the method to come out of it could be because the thought process of every cricketer is different. Their triggers are different. Their expectations are different.
“It (bad form) will occur to all of us at the point,” former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting told the ICC Review in June this year. “Virat has presumably had a 10 or 12-year run where he hasn’t had many down times... One thing I do know from experience is that quite often you bluff yourself as a player that you’re not actually tired, that you’re not physically or mentally tired. You always find a way to get yourself up for training, you always find a way to get yourself up for game. It’s not until you actually stop and have a couple of days do you realise how tired and fatigued you are.”
As we head into the Asia Cup, there will still be pressure on Kohli to deliver for India. But, at the same time, the break would have given him the time to re-evaluate where he is at and what he needs to do to get back to his best. It won’t be easy, and as de Villiers said, it comes down to belief — one quality that Kohli has always had in plenty.
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