Is Virat Kohli A Victim Of Elite Performance Decline Syndrome?

“The arc of a cricketer’s career often concludes with a struggle to come to terms with diminishing powers. The phenomenon, often unspoken yet universally understood, is what I like to call Elite Performance Decline Syndrome (EPDS).”

In an article in Sydney Morning Herald, published before the India-Australia cricket series, Australian cricketing legend Greg Chappell had thus explained the poor performance of Virat Kohli. He said with age comes many symptoms of the syndrome. They came for him, Sachin Tendulkar, Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting and Steve Smith.

But Kohli can get over it. He just needs to feel younger and free himself from self-doubt, he wrote. The struggle of the Indian batting legend is more mental than physical. For someone who has experienced nearly every aspect of international cricket and is familiar with all challenges, a change of mindset is all that is required, he suggested. Chappell was confident that Kohli could shine at the highest level again if can recreate the emotion called confidence. It is easier said than done though, he said.

Virat Kohli’s form has taken a serious dip in the last few months, beginning with the home series against New Zealand. In Australia he scored a century but was far from the prolific run-scorer he is known to be. Calls for his removal from the team have gone sharper. Fans of Indian cricket can be unforgiving but it takes some maturity to comprehend why top players fail.

“The first visible sign of EPDS is a subtle but unmistakable shift in a player’s approach at the crease. Kohli, once renowned for his domineering starts, has in recent years shown a tendency to begin tentatively,” Chappell wrote. He explained that when players are younger, they approach the game with simplicity and a focus purely on the ball. “They don’t think about very much else around that.”

“…Much like Tendulkar and Ponting before him, Kohli seems to need a buffer – a score of 20 or 30 – before he can rediscover his flow. Reaching a score of 20 or 30 acts as a psychological turning point, helping them regain the confidence and fluency of their prime,” he added.

The brilliant offside play, a strength of Kohli, has become a weakness as his dismissals in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy suggest. According to Chappell, as players age, the opposition becomes more familiar with their strengths and weaknesses. It makes it difficult for the player to maintain the same level of fluidity. In the recently concluded series, the Australians managed to turn his strength into a weakness.

The greatness of Kohli as a batsman was never in doubt. A spell of failure doesn’t make him a lesser batter than what he is. This raises the important question: should India continue to back him? That’s up to individual opinion. All great players with such long appearances face a similar late-career crisis. Whether he is a liability or an asset to the team is also a matter of individual judgement. Would it be wise to bear with him and let him rediscover his form? In sport there are never clear answers to such situations.

Kohli right now is at that point of the arc where he finds himself in a diminished state. For him the challenge is not to decide when to quit but whether to quit as a winner. The surround noise does not matter.

(By arrangement with Perspective Bytes)