Veteran India batter Virat Kohli’s poor show in India’s Champions Trophy opener against Bangladesh resulted in a barrage of criticism from the former Indian cricketers a lot of whom believe that the veteran batter has a problem playing against spin bowling, especially wrist spin. Now, former India opening batter Sunil Gavaskar has also come forward to sound alarm bells regarding the technique of Kohli while dissecting his problems with spin bowling.
Speaking to India Today, Gavaskar said, “It is to a great extent due to the fact that the bat face opens up. Same thing happens when he’s playing against the quicks in Australia. The bat face opening up, looking to play through the covers, opening the face of the bat, that gets him into trouble. So, that is something that he’s got to watch out for, even when he got out,”
“So that is something that he’s got to watch out for. A couple of times before he got out, he reached for Rishad, the ball turned, the bat face opened, and luckily the bat face opened, and so there was no nick. So that is something that he’ll have to tighten up on now. But yes, I guess if you’re getting out to the same kind of bowling, then you, you, you, there is a, there’s a bit of concern there,” former India cricketer added.
Virat Kohli’s poor run in ODI cricket:
Notably, Kohli has endured a prolonged dry spell in his cricketing career, especially since the start of 2024, with tensions coming to a boil during the Bangladesh and New Zealand series at home, followed by the Border Gavaskar Trophy in Australia.
Even in ODI cricket, the format in which he has enjoyed the most success, Kohli hasn’t been able to get going since last year. After the 2023 ODI World Cup – where Kohli shone with a record 765 runs from 11 matches – the veteran batsman has just 137 runs from six innings at an average of 22.83, including the recent half-century against England in Ahmedabad and the 22-run knock against Bangladesh on Thursday.
Kohli is a legend in ODI cricket and is the third-highest run-scorer in the format behind Kumar Sangakkara (14,234 runs) and Sachin Tendulkar (18,426 runs). Kohli is currently on the verge of reaching 14,000 runs in ODI cricket and will be hoping to not only reach the milestone in the upcoming match against Pakistan, but also get back to his scoring ways and silence his critics once and for all.
