Asia

Virat Kohli to discuss timing of taking a break with Dravid, Indian team management

May 20, 2022
Henry Club

There was one shot in Virat Kohli‘s innings against Gujarat Titans on Thursday; a supremely elegant lofted drive off Rashid Khan for a six. It oozed sublimity and also, supreme confidence. A Khan googly accounted for Kohli a couple of balls later, but in a bad season, he had his best game.

Kohli hasn’t scored a century in any format since November 2019. This IPL, where he has scored 309 runs in 14 matches, has been underwhelming by his lofty standards. Along the way, he suffered the ignominy of having golden ducks in successful matches. Trying to draw a 2014 analogy, when he had become James Anderson’s bunny in England and finished with 134 runs from 10 Test innings, could be tempting. Kohli begs to differ.

“What happened in England was a pattern so something that I could work on, something that I had to overcome. Right now, there’s nothing that you can point out saying there’s a problem here. So that for me is an easier thing to process because I know that I’m batting well and at times when I start feeling that rhythm is back then I know I’m batting well, which was not the case in England (where) I didn’t feel like I was batting well at all. So I had to work hard on one thing that I could be exposed to again and again which I overcame,” Kohli told Star Sports in an interview.

Pundits have waded into the former India captain’s elongated form slump, offering contrasting opinions. Sunil Gavaskar didn’t see anything wrong in Kohli’s batting and said that the player needed a bit of luck to get a big score. As it happens during a lean patch, rub of the green deserted Kohli.

Former India head coach Ravi Shastri, on the other hand, suggested that an “overcooked” Kohli needed a break. A relentless bubble life has its downside and like Shastri had said after the last year’s T20 World Cup: “I don’t care who you are, if your name is Bradman, if you’re in a bubble as well, your average will come down because you’re human.”

Kohli is not averse to taking a break to allow himself a “mental reset”. “There’s one person precisely who has mentioned it which is Ravi bhai and that’s because he has seen from close quarters over the last six-seven years the reality of the situation that I have been in. The amount of cricket that I have played and the ups and downs and the toll that it takes on you to play three formats of the game plus the IPL for 10-11 years non-stop with the seven years of captaincy in between,” he said.

Kohli added: “So to take a break and when to take a break is obviously something that I need to take a call on, but it is only a healthy decision for anyone to take some time off and just rejuvenate yourself mentally and physically.

“It’s only a matter of creating a balance and finding that balance which is right for you as an individual moving forward and I will definitely discuss this with all the people involved – Rahul bhai, the Indian team management – ​​everyone to chart out whatever is best for myself and for the team definitely.”

If the Chetan Sharma-led selection committee picks two different teams for India’s white-ball assignments and the one-off Test in England after the IPL, Kohli, along with the current India captain Rohit Sharma and fast bowlers Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shamiis expected to have downtime before the squad assembles for the England tour.

Coming back to Kohli’s match-winning 73 off 54 balls against Titans, the bearhug from Royal Challengers Bangalore head coach Sanjay Bangar and skipper Faf du Plessis attested happiness and showed how eagerly they were waiting for the turnaround.

,