South Africa captain Faf du Plessis has advised the Australian team that ‘silent treatment’ is perhaps the best approach to prevent the Indian skipper Virat Kohli from scoring runs against them during the four-match Test series. Australia will lock horns with South Africa for a one-off T20 game on Saturday, followed by a three-match T20I series against India, followed by the beginning of the first Test in Adelaide on December 6.

Citing India’s tour of South Africa earlier this year as an example – where the Indian captain, despite being India’s highest-scorer, tallied 286 runs in three matches – Du Plessis pointed out that players like Kohli love being provoked, and that is something that gets the best out of them. If Australia manages to avoid a scenario of provoking Virat, there is a strong chance that they might be able to stop him from scoring runs.

Du Plessis explained, “There are guys like that in international cricket (who enjoy the confrontation). We feel like that when we play against someone like Virat Kohli. There are one or two guys in each team around the world that we as a team discuss before playing against them. We’re like, ‘better not say too much to him because you’ll get him going’. We gave him the silent treatment and he still scored runs in South Africa, but we felt like it was not huge runs – he scored the one hundred there in Centurion when the wicket was slow. So every team will have what they think works – for us, that was silent treatment.”

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As a youngster, during his maiden tour of Australia in 2011-12, Kohli was consistently been provoked in Sydney, after which Kohli infamously showed them the finger. Four years later, Virat entered a heated altercation with Mitchell Johnson after the former pacer recklessly threw the ball back at Kohli and caught the batsmen on the shoulders. Kohli ended the series with 692 runs at an average of 86.50 with four centuries.

Before India’s departure for Australia, Virat, during the pre-departure press-conference, said that his team will not begin a sledging war, but won’t think twice to give it back if Australia provokes them during the much-awaited series Down Under.

The Indian skipper clarified, “When it comes to getting engaged in an argument on the field or you are in a fight, as people want to call it excitedly, I’ve been completely okay with playing without an altercation. I am very happy within my own space, so on a personal level, I don’t find the need to go and find these things anymore. I have enough belief in my abilities that I can play without a reason to pump myself up. Those were very immature things I used to feed on in the early days of my career so that I can get pumped up and then I don’t necessarily feel all that pressure.”