Virat Kohli across three career phases, showing where he spent his deliveries and what those gears returned. His 2014-19 peak was built on the middle and high gears: 42.6% of his balls came in the middle gears, where he averaged 73.9 and lasted 114.3 balls per dismissal, while another 20.4% came in the high gears. Outside that peak, the middle gears were far weaker: he averaged 36.5 before 2014 and 33.0 from 2020 onward, with balls per dismissal around 55 in both periods. His high gears survived the twilight years far better, still producing an average of 144.0 and 117.8 balls per dismissal after 2020. Kohli was never especially good at defending; to find his one genuinely strong low-gear survival phase, you have to return to his first three years, when he lasted 116.1 balls per dismissal.