Of all the records that Don Bradman holds, his dominance of the 1930 Ashes series is up there with the most unbreakable. That year Bradman scored 974 runs in five Tests, at an average of 139.14. That’s more than double the total of the next highest scorer, Herbert Sutcliffe, who got a piffling 436 at 87.2. And who knows how many runs Bradman would have managed if he’d batted a full allocation of innings: thanks to a high-scoring draw, a rain-banjaxed Test at Old Trafford and a thumping Australian win at the Oval, he only batted seven times. Needless to say, this is the highest individual aggregate over a series in Test history.
Australia won 2-1 but had the better of the two draws at Leeds and Manchester, and didn’t lose any of their other tour matches. This wasn’t quite the Invincibles of 1948, but Australia were much the better team, and Bradman had Bills Ponsford and Woodfull and Stan McCabe and Clarrie Grimmett to help him out. Cricket is perhaps the most individual of the team sports, but it does help the individual if the team is half-decent.
Which brings us to Virat Kohli. Bradman dominated the run-scoring in that 1930 series in a winning team, but Kohli has managed it in a side that goes to the Oval 3-1 down, and playing only to make the defeat less emphatic. With four Tests gone, Kohli has scored 544 runs at an average of 68. Next on the list is Jos Buttler, with a modest 260, less than half of Kohli’s total and, of the rest, only Sam Curran has more than 250. Between them, the other 28 men to have a bat in this series have scored 2,914 runs at 21.42. The batsmen and all-rounders have averaged 25.55.
It’s not especially unusual for a batsman to sit astride a series, laughing from atop a pile of runs at the weaklings below, but it is unusual for them to do so from a losing position. Of the top 50 individual totals over a Test series, only seven have come in losing efforts. The best is Clyde Walcott, who racked up 827 when Australia toured West Indies in 1955 and beat the hosts 3-0. Walcott was helped out by the other two Ws, Frank Worrell and Everton Weekes, but the next highest scorer in the series was Neil Harvey with 620. Walcott’s mark remains the highest aggregate number of runs in a single series without scoring a double hundred.
Sutcliffe is next on the list, scoring 734 at 81.55 on the 1924-25 Ashes tour in which England fell 4-1, when curiously another tourist, Maurice Tate, topped the bowling averages too. Then there’s Aubrey Faulkner, whose 732 runs against the Australians in 1910-11 were in vain, as his South African side were defeated 4-1.
Sir Garfield Sobers recorded 709 runs as England visited the Caribbean in 1959-60, leaving Ted Dexter (526 at 65.75) in the dust, despite West Indies losing the series 1-0. Kohli himself got 692 in Australia a few years ago but Steve Smith outscored him there, while Brian Lara managed an improbable 688 in three Tests against Sri Lanka in 2001-02, and Graham Gooch scored 673 in the 1993 Ashes.
Let’s assume, perhaps generously to the England bowlers, that Kohli will bat to his average at the Oval: that means he’s on course to score another 136 bringing his series total to 680. Even if he gets a pair this is already up there with the greatest performances in a losing cause Test cricket has ever seen, but two more good innings would put him even closer to the top.
And if we take one more step into the stats wormhole, you could make a case that it is at the top. Kohli’s current tally represents 15.7% of the total runs scored in the series. Compare that with the scores mentioned in the five Test series above: Walcott got 13.6%, Sutcliffe 11.4%, Faulker 12.1%, Sobers 13.4% and Gooch a shade under 10%. Like any statistics, these can be flawed or bent to fit any argument, but you get the point.
For whatever reason, batting consistency has eluded more or less everyone else this summer. Whether you put a general lack of runs down to bowler-friendly conditions, simple good bowling, absent patience brought about by T20, general existential despair or Brexit, the context in which Kohli has played marks this out as one of the most extraordinary summers you’re likely to see. But as India have lost, that might not be remembered too much.
It’s also been the ultimate “I’ll show you” summer, after his struggles on the 2014 tour to England (134 runs over five Tests, about a billion nicks off), refining his technique to basically eliminate all weaknesses and strike another argument against his greatness off the list. And still his team has lost. Not a fair game, this.
Sometimes Kohli resembles a sort of cricketing robot stuck on angry mode. The VK-1,000, who needs your boots, your clothes and your motorcycle, but rather than being sent to murder Sarah Connor, his purpose is just to score loads of runs. Occasionally you can catch a glimpse of him and convince yourself he isn’t actually human: that beard too neatly cropped, those muscles too toned, those eyes glistening so much they simply must be glass.
Perhaps Kohli’s greatest quality is that he manages to control his fire to – most of the time – just the right temperature. At times it feels like he’s amped up beyond sense, those cyborg eyes bulging and veins pulsing out of his neck which make you fear for his health, bouncing around the place like a tiger with its tail set on fire. You certainly wouldn’t expect him to then be able to play measured and skilled Test match innings with that much adrenaline throbbing in his veins, but either he has some sort of tap that turns it on and off, or he actually thrives on it.
Either way, he’s a freak. A wonderful freak, who has this summer ultimately been let down by the mere cricketers that surround him. This series has arguably hinged on a few lower order dashes by England, so perhaps all this is a bit reductive. But in Kohli we’ve watched one of the greats live up to his status.
- This is an extract taken from The Spin, the Guardian’s weekly cricket email. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
