India, Feb. 2 -- For five years from the end of 2014 to the end of 2019, Virat Kohli strung together a sequence of scores bordering on the otherworldly. Runs flowed from his scything blade with astonishing regularity; not even the law of averages could make a dent as he filled his boots in all three formats, unleashing centuries for fun and reiterating his class as the best all-version batter of his, perhaps any, generation.

Then, as dramatically as the flood came the most stunning drought. For more than 1,000 days from the time he made a special century in the first day-night Test in India, against Bangladesh in Kolkata in November 2019, a three-figure knock proved elusive. When the hundred finally arrived, it was in the form of an unbe...