There is something in Virat Kohli which makes him a great player. Call it the aggressive style of batting, his hunger for scoring runs or scoring them against tough opposition and in big matches, Virat Kohli can ace them all to perfection. On the field, Virat Kohli always puts a price on his wicket and thrives to make a contribution with the bat for his team.
Virat Kohli, who last scored a fifty against South Africa in December 2023 will be looking to regain his form in the upcoming series against New Zealand. With the big Australia Series around the corner, Indian coach Gautam Gambhir has backed Virat Kohli to find form and score big against New Zealand.
Virat Kohli toils hard in the nets at Chinnaswamy Stadium.
Virat Kohli bristled towards the practice nets. Virat Kohli scanned the skies to feel the sun, ran his fingers through the trimmed grass, greeted the groundsmen, shook hands with the curator and eyed the net bowlers haggling to bowl first at him. The setting was familiar: Chinnaswamy Stadium is perhaps more home than a home away from home, his association with Royal Challengers Bangalore turning 18 next year.
The lack of hundreds would be tossing uneasily somewhere in the innards of Virat Kohli’s mind—the drought-ending hundred in Ahmedabad did not stir a hurricane but rather a breeze, a mean of 49 runs in 12 innings. Virat Kohli is riding a curious phase where Virat Kohli has not been as emphatic as Virat Kohli had been in his 2014-2019 pomp, a four-year span wherein Virat Kohli was the emperor of all he surveyed, but has not been as miserable as he had been from mid-2019 to early 2023 slump.
Virat Kohli has been hitting the in-between frequency. Some of Virat Kohli’s contemporaries have been catching a second-wind in their careers, Joe Root for one. Australia have announced that Steve Smith experiment to open won’t be attempted against India, and he too would be inching to regain form.
After get-the-eye-in defensive blocks in the nets, he swapped his violin for a bass guitar. He drilled Akash Deep down the ground so powerful that it broke the flaky leg of a plastic chair. The remaining pack were hurriedly dragged away.
Virat Kohli often essays two varieties of the straight drive, one when he eases into the shot, a punch rather than a drive. The other type is when he whips it with the flex of his bottom hand, a shot he unfurls when he is in a commanding mood. Akash Deep retorted with an away-swinger that beat his outside edge when driving. The next ball was similar in length, but was cover-driven regally and sneaked underneath the nets to the main square.
A crew of impressionable youngsters lined up at the spin nets for a moment that could make their day, week, month or perhaps the rest of their life. A leg-break that beat Virat Kohli, or the arm-ball he edged onto his pad. Instead, their souvenir balls would only tell the pain it felt from the sweet-spot of Virat Kohli’s willow.
To nearly every ball, he stepped out. Often he clumped them over midwicket, the clank of the ball hitting the tin roof scattering the falcons into a stratospheric refuge. Most glorious was a straight six on the back-foot off a left-arm-spinner who erred on the shorter side. The groundsmen, sprawled behind the nets watching Virat Kohli, were putting in ball-boy shifts, hauling out the ball from distant corners of the stands.
Just then, a support staff member told Virat Kohli his time was up. He grudgingly came off. But he spotted an unoccupied slot in the nets on the opposite side of the ground and rushed before someone else barged in.
Of late, the majestic past has only flashed and flickered. The 76 in Centurion was a mini-classic on a minefield, with resonance to Sachin Tendulkar’s 79 not out in Lahli. The 46 in Cape Town too was an epic in the making. But sometime sooner, Virat Kohli as well as his team would wish he revived his gluttonous century-making ways. Not least before the five-Test series to Australia. The three Tests against New Zealand present an ideal opportunity to reach the Antipodean shores with seething confidence.
The bowling line-up has more spunk than Bangladesh, the three grounds usually offer sufficient bounce, and New Zealand possess a group of crafty seamers who could test and tease him, and equip him for the Australia duel. Though India had not been overdependent on Kohli for a while, he is still India’s batting metronome, his wicket akin to a quarter of the battle won.
It’s thus understandable that the critics have again begun to sharpen their knives at him. Head coach Gautam Gambhir, though, quashes them.
Gautam Gambhir backs Virat Kohli to come back to his vintage best ahead of 3 match Test series against New Zealand
Team India head coach Gautam Gambhir has expressed confidence in his teams abilities ahead of their series against New Zealand and eyes dominant performance against New Zealand. Gambhir emphasized that the team will focus on playing aggressive cricket and adapting to different situations and the importance of respecting every opposition but not fearing anyone. He expects Virat to get runs in the series and hit consistency phase
” We want to be the team who can score 400 runs in a day and can even play 2 days, that is growth and adaptability. We will play according to situation. We wont hold back people from playing aggressive cricket. We may get bundled out for 100 but we are not overly concerned and well take it up then. We will try getting the results in whatever situation we are in.”
Gautam Gambhir fittingly replied to the trolls surrounding Virat Kohli’s form . He said :
“Virat is a world-class cricketer. He is as hungry as ever. Hopefully he will get runs here and then in Australia. We know how consistent he can get once he hit that phase” he added
Gautam Gambhir acknowledged the consistency and quality of the teams players, which has made them a formidable force in international cricket. The hunger was evident in the practice session, when Virat Kohli couldn’t keep off the nets, even after most of his colleagues had packed up. When he was not batting in the nets, he was shadow-batting beside the nets.
So much so that as the evening receded and the sun made a brief appearance, he was running a batting clinic, with a horde of youngsters studying every movement of his, be it him working on his bat-swing, or fidgeting with the grip, or when he walked back with a content smile, like an emperor in his monarch gliding along a space he feels as intimate as home. The first test match between India and New Zealand starts tomorrow at M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.