Former Australian captain turned commentator Aaron Finch felt veteran batter Virat Kohli is almost intentionally trying to get involved in confrontations to regain his best batting form in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT 2024-25). However, Kohli has faced a poor run of form in Tests, averaging under 16 in the three home Tests against New Zealand coming into the Australia series as well. However, after scoring a brilliant second-innings hundred in the series opener at Perth, he has battled for runs in the next three matches as well.
Talking about Kohli’s mental state, Finch said on the Around the Wicket Podcast: “Virat’s someone who’s always thrived on pressure and he’s thrived when his back is against the wall. It just feels like at this stage, he is trying to put his own back against the wall. He’s trying to be antagonistic, he’s trying to almost pick a fight because that’s when he plays when he feels like someone’s coming at him. That’s when he puts all his skills on show. It just feels like he’s pushing other people to make him feel like that and we’ve not seen the best of him in this series yet. He looked beautiful in the first innings at Melbourne and looked like he wasn’t going to get out but Australia have bowled well.”
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Another former Australian captain Michael Clarke backed Virat Kohli over his shoulder-barge incident with Sam Konstas as well. Unfortunately for Kohli, the Melbourne Test went wrong after the ugly incident as he scored only 41 runs across the two innings in India’s 184-run defeat as well.
Talking about Kohli on the Beyond23 Cricket Podcast, as quoted by News18, Clarke said: “I know Virat as well, he would have spoken to Sam after the game. Virat’s a great guy. So those two would have sorted it out. I don’t know (if) Virat would have said sorry, whatever it was. Virat is not a nasty person. So that would be fixed 100%. I think Virat was getting frustrated with the lack of respect that Sam was showing the best bowler in the world in Bumrah. I think that’s what frustrated Virat.”
