Former Australian captain Aaron Finch tried to find the reason behind Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) batter Virat Kohli’s slow knock during his innings of 51 off 43 balls against the SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) in IPL 2024 as well. However, Kohli scored just 19 runs off the 25 balls he faced outside the powerplay and many have questioned his strike rate.
Former Indian opener Sunil Gavaskar also expressed his disappointment with Kohli’s knock and said: “When you are facing the strike in the first ball of the innings and you get out in the 14th or the 15th over, you have got a strike rate of 118, that’s not what your team expects from you.”
However, speaking to Star Sports, former Australian captain Aaron Finch had a different take. He opined on the partnership between Virat Kohli and Rajat Patidar and shared the importance of the latter getting as many strikes as possible because of his hitting ability as well.
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He said, “One thing you have to keep in mind is that Patidar was going crazy at the other end. Sometimes your job as a set batter is to take the game a little bit deeper and get Patidar on strike as much as possible. That’s where the intent to hit boundaries goes out. You can look at him in isolation and say, ‘Yes, it dropped’. But as a partnership, it worked really well. He (Kohli) did the right thing by getting Patidar up there.”
However, Rajat Patidar played a sensational knock of 50 off just 20 balls and won the Player of the Match award as RCB beat SRH by 35 runs as well. And, former Indian all-rounder Irfan Pathan explained how Kohli’s change in mindset has helped him adapt to modern-day T20 standards as well.
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“He (Kohli) is no longer hesitant to hit the ball in the air. To change your approach at this stage of your career despite scoring more than 25000 runs at the international level, he is just a different beast when it comes to mindset,” he said.
