On his first tour of Australia, a young and brash Virat Kohli flipped the bird to abusive local fans. It won’t be as easy this summer for him to dismiss the calling of Father Time.

The great Kohli has become mediocre. It’s not an overreaction to one bad series but a perfectly reasonable conclusion to draw after five years of middling performances.

Virat Kohli enters this summer’s series against Australia in a five-year form slump.Credit: Getty Images

Since the start of 2020, Kohli is averaging a tick under 32 with the bat. In all but one of those years, he has averaged below 30.

The raging turners that have become the norm in India have not helped, nor can they be solely blamed for his downturn. His away average of 33.57 is only slightly better than the mark of 29.92 in India. He has struggled both at home and abroad.

Damningly, eight other Indian batters in this period, who have played a minimum of 20 innings, have a higher average than Kohli. Internationally, he sits 55th. The man they call “King Kohli” is in the company of journeymen.

Any other player with those numbers would have been dropped. Take Shreyas Iyer and K.L. Rahul, who have marginally better numbers. Iyer did not get a ticket on the plane to Australia, even with India A. Rahul is the social media whipping boy for cricket fans in India.

Ricky Ponting’s surprise that Kohli had scored just two centuries from his past 60 innings drew a sharp rebuke from Indian coach Gautam Gambhir this week.

Just as well the former captain of Australia did not have the cheek to say that in the 1205 days between Kohli’s 27th and 28th Test hundreds, the world endured a pandemic and found a vaccine for COVID-19.

There would not be many people in the world who have seen Kohli play as often as has former Indian batter turned........

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