New Delhi: Vikram Rathour, Team India’s former batting coach, acclaimed star batter Virat Kohli for his stellar batting performances through his thriving career across formats. Rathour, who has worked with Kohli quite closely for the past few years, said that he likes how Kohli seamlessly transitions himself while playing in a specific format and notably gave an outstanding example for the same.
Moving back to the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2016, Rathour remembered what a record-breaking season Kohli had when he turned out to be the highest run-scorer in a single edition of the IPL (till date). The swashbuckling batter amassed 973 runs in 16 matches at an outstanding average of 81.08 and a strike rate of 152.03 that came with the help of four centuries and seven fifties. He blasted 83 fours and 38 sixes during the season.
Although Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) missed out on the IPL 2016 title narrowly; losing to Sunrisers Hyderabad in the final, Kohli shone with the bat in the mega clash, scoring 54 runs off 35 balls while going after the target of 209 set by Hyderabad.
Kohli’s ‘biggest quality’
Rathour, who recently left the Indian dressing room after Gautam Gambhir took over as the head coach, highlighted the fact that it is Kohli’s “adaptability” which is his biggest quality and that is what sets him apart from the rest. For this, he gave a perfect example of Kohli’s run in cricket in the year 2016.
Rathour was a recent guest on the YouTube show ‘Find a Way with Taruwar Kohli’, where he said that Kohli scored nearly 1,000 runs with a soaring trike rate. He emphasised that he was in awe of Kohli on how he adjusted his game to different formats, adding that he went on to score a double hundred in the tour that followed, without playing a single shot in the air.
“Kohli scored 980 something, hit 40+ sixes and a strike rate of 160 in IPL 2016. Immediately after that he went to West Indies and he was the captain there and he scored double hundred in first Test without playing a single shot in air. That’s the biggest quality Kohli has, his adaptability,” Rathour said.
Kohli had scored his first double century then as he hit 200 runs off 283 balls in the first innings of the opening match of the series. His innings included 24 boundaries. He would later go on to become the first batter to score four double centuries in consecutive Test series.
Out of all the praises showered upon Virat Kohli for his excellence, very few have actually tried talking about what makes him stand apart from the rest of the batters in the world. Here’s what Vikram Rathour said on the “run machine”. Cricket Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
