Virat Kohli at 37: a new batter or a purple patch?

Virat Kohli had never hit more than eight sixes in an ODI innings, and those eight came at the same ground, against Sri Lanka in January 2023. On Sunday in Thiruvananthapuram he hit nine. His unbeaten 139 off 88 balls chased down West Indies' 295 with 50 balls to spare, brought up his 55th ODI hundred and took him past 15,000 ODI runs.

The day before, he told JioStar that the 2027 World Cup would be "the last World Cup I'm going to play for India". Kevin Pietersen called him a genius. Harsha Bhogle wrote that great players "show you another dimension to their greatness. Kohli did that tonight." Kohli's own explanation was simpler: "I promised myself I'm going to play positively because I can."

The question is whether this is a new Kohli or a purple patch, because India now have a World Cup to plan around him.

Sixes like never before

Something has changed in Kohli's one-day batting, and it can be traced back to one innings: 135 off 120 balls in Ranchi last November, with seven sixes. It came five weeks after two ducks in a row in Perth and Adelaide, and he followed it with 102 in Raipur three days later. In 10 ODI innings from Ranchi onwards, he has scored 825 runs at an average of 103 and a strike rate of 117, with four hundreds.

He has made this many runs before. Over 10 innings in 2018, starting with his unbeaten 160 in Cape Town, he made 995 at an average of 142 and a strike rate of 104. The sixes have no precedent. He has hit 28 in his last 10 innings. Before Ranchi, the most he had hit in any 10 innings in a row was 13.

A different start

The biggest change comes early in the innings. For most of his career Kohli played himself in and caught up later. From 2008 to last October, his strike rate in the first 10 overs was 72, against 78 for other top-three batters in the same overs of ODIs between Full Members. Since Ranchi it has been 111, while other top-three batters have scored at 77.

That early-overs figure comes from just six innings in which he arrived inside the first 10 overs, 89 balls in all, and none of them on Sunday. The middle overs show the same shift over far more balls: a strike rate of 109 in overs 11 to 40, against 89 for other top-three batters in those overs.

His IPL season this year, the only T20 cricket he has played since Ranchi, moved less. He scored at 166 for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, the fastest of his IPL career, but other top-three batters in the IPL scored at 167. In T20 he kept pace with a league that keeps getting quicker. The leap is in the 50-over game.

The reins are off

Yes, Kohli has taken the reins off, and he isn't putting them back on. The average of 103 will come down, as his 2018 average did. The way he bats won't. He used to start slower than other top-order batters and now starts far quicker. He hits a six every 25 balls, against one every 98 before Ranchi. He says he chose to bat this way, and at 37, scoring this heavily, he has every reason to carry on.

What it means for 2027

The World Cup will be played in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia in October and November next year. Kohli will be 38 when it starts. South Africa has suited him: across that 2018 series he made 558 runs in six innings, with three hundreds.

India's old plan had Kohli batting through at No. 3 while others took the risks. If he keeps batting like this, the No. 3 becomes one of the attackers, and the job of batting through the innings passes to someone else. On Sunday that was Shubman Gill, the captain, who made 110 off 108 balls.