Venky Srinivasan retweetledi
Virat Kohli keeps asking the same question & the critics keep running out of answers. Since 2023, he has scored 2365 runs in 51 IPL innings. He has been dismissed for single digits just 3 times in his last 40 innings (On average, 1 single digit score per season).
13 of his last 15 innings crossed 25, 11 went past 40, 8 cleared 50. While everyone else chased highlights, he built a floor of consistency so high that failure became a stranger.
Critics called him an anchor. They said T20 had moved past him, that his method was built for a slower era. So he changed the physics. The bat that used to come down straight & still started moving before the bowler released. Up, down, tap, hover. R Ashwin called it potential energy. Rest of us called it freedom.
Then 2025 happened. RCB won their first title in 18 years. Kohli made 657 runs that season, nothing flashy, just a man holding his nerve while the world wobbled. The title did not relax him. It unlocked something.
2026 brought the real transformation. He quit Tests. What remained was just a batter. No format switching, no need to keep one part of his brain defensive while the other attacked. This season he hits a boundary every 4.9 balls. He strikes at 160 in the powerplay, 140 in the middle, 200 in the death.
Dale Steyn watched the opener against Sunrisers Hyderabad. Kohli hit 69 not out off 38 balls, 5 sixes, a chase of 202 done in 15.2 overs. Steyn said he was hitting aerial shots time & again. A man who had stopped fearing the fall.
The attacking shot percentage tells the story. 40.6 percent in 2021. Almost 75 percent in 2026. He steps down to spin now. He lofts over long on. He was the cover drive man, the wristy flick man. Now he is something messier & more dangerous. Striking at 163 this season. Averaging 54.6, which is technically a dip from his overall average of 56 since 2023. That is the level he has set.
No other batter has scored more runs than him in the last 4 IPL seasons. Not Gill, Not Jaiswal, Not Buttler, Not Samson. He has also hit more sixes than all of them since 2023. The man they called slow is out-hitting the generation that was supposed to replace him. He is not surviving T20 anymore. He is still defining it.
Critics will find something new. Kohli will hear them, fix what needs fixing & keep asking what is next. The bat is still moving, The red jersey is still his. And somehow, impossibly, he is just getting started.
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