Virat Kohli: If we look at the last 10 years in cricket, comparisons have been made from time to time between the Fab-4 in batting. Virat Kohli is better in some things and in others, apart from Steve Smith and Kane Williamson, Joe Root has also been achieving continuously. Talking about the facts, there have been continuous ups and downs in Steve Smith’s performance in the last 10 years, but his ranking has never been below the top-5 in the month of March every year from 2014 to 2024. Smith has been struggling with poor form many times, despite this his staying in the top-5 is unbelievable, but if Virat Kohli deviates from the rhythm, his ranking starts falling.
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Steve Smith is better than Virat Kohli
Talking about the current Test ranking, Steve Smith is at third place in the list of top batsmen, while Virat Kohli is currently sitting at eighth place. Kohli is regularly playing century and half-century innings, yet he is out of the top-5. Whereas former Australia captain Smith has not scored a century in 19 innings, yet he remains at number-3. Kohli was even out of the list of top-10 batsmen some time ago.
Many aspects are involved in the ranking of a batsman, in which returning unbeaten after an innings also has an impact. If we talk about the last 7 innings, Smith has returned unbeaten thrice, whereas it has been a long time since Virat Kohli returned to the pavilion unbeaten. Apart from this, if we talk about the last one and a half years, Virat Kohli has scored runs at a better average than Smith, but he is slightly ahead of Kohli in terms of scoring more runs. Smith may have been out of form, but despite not playing big innings, his ranking has remained stable because of playing 40-50 innings continuously.
2023: lot of difference between them
If we talk about the runs scored by Kohli and Smith in 2023, there was a lot of difference between them. Even though the number of matches played by Kohli may have been less, scoring more runs also affects his batting ranking. After July 2023, Kohli has been playing good innings continuously, hence he has moved up 6 places in the ranking of Test batsmen as compared to that time.
