Data check: Patience could be key to Virat Kohli’s success with the red ball in England

As India begin their campaign in the five-Test series against England, the focus will be on Virat Kohli, who is seeking redemption after a poor outing during his trip to the Old Blighty in whites.

India’s fate could well rely on the India skipper who comes into the tour having already impressed during his side’s Test series against South Africa. He was India’s standout performer on that tour.

In fact, Kohli has been one of India’s shining lights in the past few years. His performance with the bat has literally proved to be the difference.

On the 2014 tour of England, Kohli managed to score just 134 runs in 10 innings at an average of just 13.40. His highest score during that entire series was just 39. India lost that series 3-1 with most of their batsmen struggling to put up much of a fight.

Four years since, the team is back in England facing another five-Test challenge. Kohli is India’s best batsman by a fair distance. The expectations are sky high, but he enters the competition with a weight of expectations on his shoulders. If the South Africa series has revealed anything, it is the fact that India are reliant on Kohli to do the heavy lifting when conditions are adverse.

English conditions are fickle and are known to change dramatically. Patience is key in such a scenario. In the past, only a few have delivered a noteworthy performance across the series.

Among the current crop, the players to have delivered some performance of note in England have been Dinesh Karthik and Murali Vijay. The former during the 2007 series and latter during the last tour.

Kohli will look to emulate Dilip Vengsarkar in this regard. The former middle-order batsman’s heroics during the 1986 tour have become a part of Indian cricket’s folklore. Not only was he the top-scorer for India on the tour, but his batting effort steered India to a series win.

Individual performances, though, haven’t always translated into series victories.

So far, India’s most consistent performers in England have been Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sunil Gavaskar and Sourav Ganguly. India, though, did not go onto win those series.

It was in fact a collective effort that saw India snap the 21-year drought in 2007, when the team beat England 1-0.

However since then, India have come back from the tour of England empty handed.

In the past two years, though, it is Kohli who has taken the lead when it has come to batting performances. The likes of Cheteshwar Pujara, Shikhar Dhawan and Ajinkya Rahane have chipped in, but they haven’t been as consistent as Kohli.

The key for Kohli and his teammates would be to bat with patience. Numbers reveal that batsmen who have bided their time and gone about nullifying the bowling have done well in England.

The likes of Dravid and Tendulkar had seldom adopted an aggressive approach when it came to Tests in England.

For Kohli, though, it is easier said than done. He’s known to bat with intensity. His career strike-rate of 58.26 is quite impressive. For him to reign in his natural instinct would be difficult. However, it is this same stance that brought him success in South Africa, and there’s no way state for sure that it won’t work again in England.

Here are the top 15 performances by tour. With the exception of Ganguly, all are historically patient players.