Rarely it happens that India skipper Virat Kohli has a bad day in office but what’s more rare is that he has a bad series. Unfortunately for India, it happened in the three-match ODI series against New Zealand and the team paid the price by conceding the series. According to his own high standards, Kohli couldn’t lit up the ODI series with his blade and his stunning numbers have taken a beating because of it.
Kohli could muster just 75 runs in three innings against the Kiwis (51, 15 and 9) and his average reads 25. This is the lowest series average that Kohli has recorded in the last five years. The last time Kohli had such low average in an ODI series was against Bangladesh in 2015.
Kohli’s dip in numbers have in a way resulted in India’s losing the ODI series against New Zealand. Although he did hit a half-century in the first ODI, but it was Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul who took India closer to the 350-run mark with their fine hard-hitting in the dying overs of the game.
‘Chase Master’ Kohli then failed with the bat in Auckland as India lost the second ODI by 22 runs and also lost their first series against New Zealand since 2014. Kohli had a chance to redeem himself in the final ODI but could hit just 9 runs.
Kohli will now hope he comes up with the goods with the bat in the upcoming Test series against Kane Williamson’s troops as according to his own admission, ‘ODIs aren’t too relevant this year compared to Tests and T20s’.
