More sixes, no less Virat: Is 37-year-old Kohli better than his best?

In the 38th over India’s chase of 296, Virat Kohli batted on 94 off 73 balls. India were racing around 240 with eight wickets in hand. The chase was well under control. An earlier version of Kohli might have looked for a gap against left-arm spinner Gudakesh Motie, worked the ball into the leg side and sprinted back for two. A hundred would come soon.

On Sunday, Kohli took a different route.

He danced down the track to Motie and carried him over his head and into the stands at the Greenfield International Stadium in Thiruvananthapuram. It was his 55th ODI hundred.

It was also his sixth sixth inning. Three more were to come.

Kohli finished unbeaten on 139 off 88 balls, with 10 fours and nine sixes, as India chased down 296 in 41.4 overs. He reached his fifty with a six, his hundred with a six and ended the match with another. The nine sixes were the most he had hit in an ODI innings. The hundred came off 74 balls, his third fastest in the format.

Six to get to three figures was the shot that best captured the change. Kohli didn’t need to hit it. He made up his mind.

KOHLI HITS DIFFERENTLY

He hasn’t built his ODI innings like this for most of his career. His great strength was control: finding the gaps, running hard, rotating the strike and waiting for the right moment to accelerate. Between 2017 and 2019, a three-year period that produced the most outstanding sustained figures of his career, Kohli scored 4,039 runs at 79.19 with 17 hundreds. He hit 43 sixes in 65 innings at an average of 0.66 per innings.

Rohit Sharma, the benchmark for sixes in ODI cricket and the format’s record holder with 363 sixes, hit 121 in 67 innings over the same period: 1.81 per innings.

Kohli didn’t need to hit sixes like Rohit. He averaged almost 80.

But something has changed.

Since the end of Champions Trophy 2025, Kohli has scored 899 runs in 13 ODI innings at 89.90. He has four hundreds and five fifties. He also hit 28 sixes: 2.15 per innings. Rohit has hit the same number of sixes in 16 innings during that period, at 1.75 per innings.

The comparison is striking as it shows how much Kohli’s boundary hitting has changed. During his prime in 2017-19, he hit 0.66 sixes per innings. Now they hit more than three times as many.

And he didn’t become any less consistent in the process.

Kohli’s average increased by more than 10 runs. His overall boundary output has also increased: from 6.69 fours and sixes per innings in 2017-19 to 7.85 in the period since the Champions Trophy.

The sample is small compared to the 65 innings across his statistical peak, so it’s too early to use 13 innings to rewrite what Kohli has done in three years. But it is enough to show what he added to his game.

He takes more risks without losing consistency. And he did it on purpose.

THE NEW SIXER KING?

–Kohli, 2017–19Rohit, 2017–19Kohli, from CT 2025Rohit, from CT 2025He’s running4.0393.813899759shifts65671316Average79.1965.7489.9050.60Hundreds171842Sixes431212828Sixes/Innings0.661.812.151.75Fours3923667483Limits/shifts6.697.277.856.94

FINDING FREEDOM

Ahead of the West Indies series, Kohli spoke about a promise he made to himself. His motivation is clear: The 2027 World Cup will be his last for India.

“What has changed is firstly, I have promised myself that I will play more freely. I will not worry about the expectations that people around me might have,” he told JioStar.

For years, Kohli’s role has been to stabilize the innings. Now he wants to change the game more aggressively.

“I am consciously trying to change the game where you can get 30-40 extra runs,” he said.

This is partly because of the way ODI cricket has shifted. Teams are increasingly playing towards 340 and 350. Kohli wants to be able to take India there, rather than simply ensuring that the innings doesn’t fall apart.

“The game is changing in such a way that especially if the conditions are fast and good and other teams are trying to push you to 340-350, we should be able to hit 350-360 as well,” he said.

“I am very willing to take risks now because I know if I make runs there we will get 350-360 easily.

There is a condition attached to this freedom. Kohli doesn’t want aggression to turn into ruthlessness.

“As I said, I promised myself to play positively because I can. So I will continue to play like that, but not to be reckless,” he said after the match.

“There’s a fine line that, as a professional, as an experienced player, I should have the ability to execute in that way, without playing without reckless strokes, and carry the team through.”

The same shift was visible in the IPL. His strike rate in 2024 was 154.69, followed by 144.71 in 2025 and 165.84 in 2026. His sixes went from 16 in 2023 to 38 in 2024, 19 in 2025 and 25 in 2026.

Hence, the change is not limited to one ODI innings or one format. Kohli has spent the last few years becoming more comfortable with a riskier version of his bat.

FITNESS WORKS DRIVING

Virat Kohli talked about the importance of fitness in driving his evolution (PTI Photo)

The physical side is also important. Kohli’s explanation that it is possible to play this way at 37 is not complicated. First, it indicates fitness.

“I just keep myself in very good physical condition because the match is more or less in the mind,” he said on Sunday.

“For me it’s about staying mentally fresh, staying in the moment and just putting myself out there to play a certain way, get used to that template more often.”

“At this point in my career, I’m struggling to up the ante a little bit and play a notch or two higher.

Kohli’s physical prowess allows him to envision a higher gear and sustain it. He can take on more risk because he trusts his body to continue to do the other things his innings demand — run hard, turn ones into twos, accelerate late and stay sharp in the field.

“But I think you need a healthy body to follow a free mind,” he said.

“So it works the other way around for me. I stay physically fit and then I’m able to envision the game the way I want to play, which gives me the best chance to go out there and execute it the way I did tonight.”

At 37, he is not looking to recreate the Kohli of 2018. That version scored 1,202 ODI runs in 14 innings at 133.35 with six hundreds. What was extraordinary was precisely how ruthlessly he combined control and consistency.

The current version is different.

How do you improve a near-perfect ODI batter?

This is the type of question that usually answers itself. Why fix something that isn’t broken? Kohli’s ODI game has already been honed to an extraordinary level: runs, hundreds, average, consistency.

But that is also what has always set Kohli apart. He was never particularly interested in leaving the good enough alone. At 37, with little left to prove in the format, he’s still looking for ways to improve.

He’s identified a different gear, vowed to play looser, and is taking risks he didn’t take at his peak. What’s remarkable about this is that he manages this without giving up the consistency that made him great in the first place.

Trying to improve on perfection is one thing. Actually improving it is something else. This is perhaps the genius of Virat Kohli.

– The end