Written by: Deelisha Maharjan - 2022006, Grade X
Posted on: 11 February, 2021
The latest India vs England Test series has been watching the context of the ICC World Test Championship, just one of those two teams goes to play the finals vs New Zealand at Lord’s from June 18-22. While this is often one battle that's happening between the teams, Joe Root’s recent performance including his 2 double hundreds in 3 tests has given rise to a different hot topic of dialogue, which is of Virat Kohli vs Joe Root. Considered the members of the elite ‘Fab 4’ of the fashionable era, Virat Kohli and Joe Root are considered the fashionable era test greats. While both are phenomenal overall in test matches since their debut, Joe Root has recently reached the milestone of being the primary player among Fab 4 to play 100 Test matches.
At home:
At home, Virat Kohli has managed to attain a complete of 3558 runs from 60 innings at a wonderful average of 68.4. His highest score of 254* has come against South Africa in South Africa’s tour of India in 2019. Virat’s consistency stands at 51.7% whereas his low-scores stand at 36.2%.
Joe Root has played almost 50% more cricket than Virat Kohli. Talking about his performance, Root has scored a complete of 4348 runs from 94 innings at a mean of fifty .55, consistency of 45.7%, and low-scores of 43.7%; all three not better than Virat Kohli. Overall, Joe Root has 11 centuries reception, that’s 1 quite his away century.
At SNA countries(South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia):
In SNA countries, Virat’s performance is sort of good with 2162 runs from 43 innings at a mean of 51.5, consistency of 46.5%, and low-scores of 39.5%. Overall, Virat has 9 hundred to his name from 43 innings and features a better of 169 against Australia in 2014.
While Root has played an identical number of innings at 44, he has 400 runs but Kohli, i.e 1742 runs at a mean of 42.5. His consistency is decent at 44.2%, but his low-scores is the same at 39.5%. The bad thing, however, is that Root has only 2 centuries in SNA countries; that’s 7 but that of Kohli.
Among top-ranked teams:
Virat Kohli has been equally good against all 4 teams averaging on the brink of 50. Overall, he has 5100 runs from 108 innings at a mean of 51, consistency of 43.4%, and low-scores of 42.5%, which is slightly on the upper side. Interesting to notice that 18 of his 27 hundred have come against quality teams.
Root has maintained a 40+ average against these teams together with his best coming against India where he has 1639 runs from 29 innings at a mean of 63. Overall, against top-ranked teams, Joe Root has 5392 runs from 118 innings at a mean of 49, consistency of 48.3%, and low-scores of 38.8%.
Overall conclusion:
Overall, Virat Kohli and Joe Root have quite similar numbers. While Kohli has scored 7318 runs from 147 innings at an average of 53.4, consistency of 44.8%, and low-scores of 42.1%, Joe Root has scored 8467 runs from 182 innings at an average of 50.4, consistency of 46.4%, and low-scores of 40.2%.
