Former India player turned veteran commentator Aakash Chopra has said that the knock played by Faf du Plessis was mainly instrumental in the Royal Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) IPL 2022 win against the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG). Faf du Plessis scored 96 runs off 64 balls to help RCB set a 182-run target for LSG and won the match by 18 runs.
While reviewing the RCB-LSG game in a video shared on his YouTube channel, Aakash Chopra said: “I will go with Faf du Plessis. Of course, Josh Hazlewood has a very strong case but I am not talking about Josh because you wouldn’t have reached till here. Let’s be honest, it was a decent pitch, the boundary on one side was very short but when you lose two wickets in the first over of the game – Dushmantha Chameera first dismisses Anuj Rawat and then Kohli for a golden duck – then you feel you are gone.”
Chopra observed: “Then Maxi (Maxwell) is there with Faf and you think Maxi will score runs. He hits a few boundaries and then he also gets out. Now what, how will you go ahead from here?”
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While praising Shahbaz Ahmed and Dinesh Karthik for playing brilliant cameos, Aakash Chopra also lauded Faf du Plessis for almost carrying the innings on his shoulder.
He elaborated: “Shahbaz and Dinesh Karthik come here but Faf stays there, right from the start to the finish, unfortunate to miss out on his hundred, 96 was absolutely stellar. He played an extremely beautiful knock. Whoever were the main threats, you had a threat from Ravi Bishnoi, he (Faf) completely demolished him, he would probably not have conceded so many runs ever. He neutralized Dushmantha Chameera at the start and Avesh Khan later. Faf du Plessis played a captain’s knock and took the team to a total which they defended, he captained very well also.”
He also opened up on Virat Kohli’s poor run for a long time. He got out on a duck in the match against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG). He played a short-of-a-length delivery from Dushmantha Chameera straight down Deepak Hooda’s hand at the backward point. Virat Kohli has scored only 119 runs at an average of 19.83 in his seven knocks in IPL 2022 so far.
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Aakash Chopra again shared, “What is happening? I even tweeted that this too shall pass, eventually it will, right, that he will score runs. You still expect, fingers and toes crossed, that it is Kohli, he is the run-machine, ton-machine, that he will eventually score runs and when he scores, he will not stop but ‘when will he score runs’ is a question that has taken our sleep away. Every time it feels that this guy will score runs because he has pedigree, class, is such a big player and has scored so many runs. I mean the bad time will end sometime but it is not happening.”
“We used to say that everyone has their time but this player has his era. That era came and ran for a long time and very well but now, how many matches have passed. The runs that are scored in between, they are also not big knocks. How many times he has gotten dismissed playing like this for zero, run out twice, getting caught of widish deliveries. What is happening with Kohli? I feel show his horoscope, do some yajna because I have no way to tell you how to come back from here,” Aakash Chopra concluded.
