Here is a potentially controversial statement. Virat Kohli’s IPL of 2026 has been as good as if not better than his IPL of 2016. Scoring 973 runs at a strike rate of 152.03 is an extraordinary feat, but his 600 runs at 164.38 this year are more indicative of a proper team plan from Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) and Kohli slotting in in that plan perfectly.
A good example is Kohli’s reaction to losing opening partner Venkatesh Iyer to the last ball of the second over in Qualifier 1 against Gujarat Titans, the best attack of the tournament. To the next ball, Kohli charged at the bowler and lofted a good-length ball over mid-off.
Kohli of 2026 is truly just living for the powerplay. And if he makes it out of the powerplay, he has batted as if still in the powerplay. He has made boundary attempts against 47% of the balls he has faced in the powerplay and 46% overall. No dip in intent, which at attempting a boundary nearly every second ball, is quite high to begin with. The strike rate has fallen negligibly from 10.05 per over in the powerplay to 9.33 in the middle overs. Spin in middle overs had earlier been a weakness for him, but this year he has only had to face 71 balls of spin that phase.
Never before has Kohli played this role with such devotion: set a high tempo in the powerplay, then maintain it or get out trying to do so. This involves trusting other batters to do their job of taking on the middle overs and death overs, a shift from what used to almost be tattooed on the brain of Kohli the cricketer: finish the job, don’t leave it to others.
So while Kohli scored a higher volume of runs in 2016 than anyone else has done in a single IPL season, it came at an opportunity cost. Analyst and cricket writer Himanish Ganjoo devised a simple and elegant method of calculating the impact of an innings: what difference did every ball a batter faced make to the DLS projections? In 2016, Kohli added 84.09 runs to the expected team score, but he took so many balls to do that that he possibly deprived others a chance to make a bigger impact.
Kohli’s impact per 100 balls has come down marginally from 13.14 in 2016 to 11.25 this year, but Rajat Patidar is adding 47.73 per 100 balls to a projected DLS score. In 2016, AB de Villiers boosted the score by 38.96 runs per 100 balls. Even on ESPNcricinfo’s impact numbers, whose calculation has evolved since 2016 and thus not the best metric for comparison, Kohli’s impact per ball has gone up marginally from 2016 to 2026.
It has to be a mix of a few things at work here. Kohli probably feels this is the most complete batting line-up he has been a part of, which means he can let go of the conventional wisdom that the longer he bats the better it is for the team. The team management has probably impressed this upon him more sternly than any other leadership group before. He is also possibly not worried about adversely affecting his game for first-class cricket, which he no longer plays. The competitor in him stays alive and well, keeping him fit enough and hungry enough to be able to make these changes to his approach.
Consequently Kohli is attacking more frequently, and as it turns out more efficiently. He is striking at 9.98 per over against good-length balls, which is 1.6 per over better than in 2016 and 0.98 per over than 2024, his two best seasons before 2026. He is clearly putting a smaller price on his wicket, taking more risks against good balls, and facilitating the optimum use of the batting resources at his team’s disposal. In terms of conquering a variety of bowling styles, this hasn’t been a complete season for Kohli, but the thing with T20 is, it doesn’t have to be.
