Virat Kohli hit an unbeaten 89 off 47 deliveries as hosts India set the West Indies an imposing target of 193 in the second semi-final of the ongoing ICC Twenty20 World Cup.
This was just the latest in a series of superb performances from Kohli: last week he starred as India squeezed into the semi-finals thanks to his sensational innings of 82 not out off 51 balls — more than half of India’s total.
And both his 89 against the West Indies on Thursday and a 55 against Pakistan earlier in the tournament represented 46 per cent of the team’s respective totals.
Kohli’s outstanding form with the bat in cricket’s shortest format is far from a new development. In fact he is a huge outlier when we look at all top batsmen’s batting averages and relative contributions to their team’s totals.
The one weakness with using batting averages is that this particular cricket statistic is calculated by dividing all runs scored by only the number of times a batsman lost their wicket, rather than dividing runs scored by matches played.
This can be particularly problematic here in the 20-over form of the game, for two reasons. First, its aggressive style of play means opening batsmen are more likely to lose their wicket early on than in the longer, more measured formats, deflating their runs-per-wicket score as a result. And second, the limited number of deliveries in a Twenty20 match means that once batsmen further down the order such as Kohli come in to play, there are fewer opportunities than normal for them to be dismissed.
As a result, perhaps a fairer way to compare absolute batting prowess is to look at a more crude measure: total runs divided by innings played.
The gap closes slightly, but there is still no doubt that Kohli remains in a class of his own.
One final way to slice the data is to look at individual innings performances instead of career-averages. Here we see that Kohli owes some of his quality to his composure at the crease.
He is neither the biggest hitter — West Indies’ Chris Gayle and New Zealand’s Brendan McCullum each have several higher scores to their name — or even the most prolific — Gayle and Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene have more top-10-per-cent efforts — but Kohli’s consistency is what puts both his average performance and importance to the team way out in front.
