Virat Kohli (L) and Rohit Sharma© AFP
Legendary Indian cricket team batter Kris Srikkanth believes Virat Kohli should stick to his natural game instead of adopting an aggressive approach from the very first ball. In the recently concluded T20I series against Afghanistan, fans and experts were surprised with the style of batting that Kohli displayed. After missing the first game due to personal reasons, Kohli slammed 29 off just 16 balls in the second game with couple of slog sweeps. However, in the next match, he scored the first golden duck of his T20I career after he was caught at mid-off after miscuing the very first ball.
Srikkanth cited the example of Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal as players who can adopt an aggressive style of batting from the start and he advised Kohli to stick to his natural game.
“Each player has his own game. Everybody should first follow their game. If you tell Yashasvi Jaiswal to take his time and play, it’s not right. Players like him and ‘Cheeka’, you can’t tell them to take their time,” Srikkanth said on his YouTube channel.
“Rohit Sharma is capable of doing it. Virat Kohli should play his natural game. He likes taking his time. He is not worried about hitting sixes. He is capable of accelerating in the end, hit sixes in the end. We saw the Pakistan game in Melbourne, the way he built it up and won it for us.”
“So, like you said, the strike rate and all that should be on the back of the mind. If you run after it desperately, it won’t work. If you started swinging from the word go… this is international cricket, you will be lucky to connect once or twice, not always.”
“Virat Kohli should follow his principles of the game. How has he succeeded in international cricket? He has followed his style and done it. I think everybody should stick to their strengths,” he added.
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