IND v AUS 2023: ‘Can’t believe a player of his class has gone that long without a hundred,’ Mark Waugh on Virat Kohli

Virat Kohli hasn't hit a Test century since November 2019.

Virat Kohli might have ended his long-standing century drought in white-ball cricket last year, but the star batter’s extended lean patch in the longest format still persists.

Since the start of 2020, Kohli has amassed only 1028 runs from 23 Tests without a century. In fact, the star India batter slammed his last Test hundred way back in November 2019.

Moreover, Virat averaged less than 30 in each of the last three years and the three Tests of 2023 so far. As a result, his Test average has dropped below 50.

Australian batting great Mark Waugh is finding it hard to believe that a player of Virat Kohli’s calibre is enduring such a long wait for a Test century.

“I cannot believe a player of his class has gone that long without a hundred,” Waugh said on Fox Cricket.

“He’s been in good touch recently, he’s batted well in one-day cricket. I know it’s not Test match cricket, but the signs have been there in his last three innings in Test cricket that he’s actually playing pretty well. He’s middling the ball, he’s watching the ball well, and his defence is strong. He’s just making the odd error and it’s proving costly for him. He hasn’t had a lot of luck. He makes one mistake and he’s out," he added.

In the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia at home, Kohli has registered scores of 12, 44, 20, 22 and 13 in five innings so far.

According to Mark Waugh, Kohli is feeling the pressure to score a hundred when he walks out to bat.

“He’s a world-class player and I feel like a hundred is just around the corner for him. He’s feeling the pressure, no doubt about it … I feel like he is a little bit tense when he goes out there in the middle," he said.

“He actually does play with quite hard hands, he likes to feel bat on ball. That dismissal in the first innings he just played that too square, if he played that to mid on he would have been okay, but he played it around his front pad.

“He does tend to plant his front foot, which technically is not a great thing to do in India. We have seen him play back in the crease in a couple of innings, which is quite well-suited to slower pitches. There’s no obvious weakness, but he seems to make one mistake and he’s gone.”