New Delhi: India need Virat Kohli despite his the prolonged slump in form, says former Australia skiper Michael Clarke, even as calls for star batter to be dropped from the Test team gain traction.
Kohli has seen his form dip since 2000 in red-ball cricket and could score only 190 runs from nine innings of five matches at an average of 23.75, including a century.
The former India skipper struck a century in the second innings of the first match at Perth but his well established weakness outside the off stump haunted him throughout the series as he was dismissed for low scores from them on.
He was caught at the slip cordon in all of his next seven innings, leading to widespread criticism and talks of him taking retirement intensified. But Clarke is not among those who wants Kohli to be dropped or forced int retirment, rather backing him to find his big-scoring touch again.
“It’s Virat Kohli! This guy can make a double hundred tomorrow. He’s that good a player. This guy could play, he should play until he’s had enough. If he retires from Test cricket right now, there’s only one team losing out, it’s India,” Clarke told Beyond23 Cricket podcast.
“If I was captain of any team that Virat Kohli was in, even though I know he didn’t make as many runs as he would have liked, I’m fighting for him to stay in my team.”
‘Kohli different to Tendulkar’
While comparing Kohli with Sachin Tendulkar, Clarke observed that both are completely different type of batters. While Kohli needs to feel the touch of the cricket ball on his bat, Tendulkar can be more picky.
“Sachin was a different player to Virat Kohli. A lot of people during this Australian summer were saying Sachin did it in a Test match. He got out to cover driving a couple of times and then let it go to make a 200 at the SCG. Sachin is a different player to Virat. Virat’s greatest strength is bat on ball. He just plays it in a different way,” Clarke said.
Kohli has seen his form dip in red-ball cricket and could score only 190 runs from nine innings of five matches at an average of 23.75, including a century, against Australia in the Border-Gavaskar series Cricket Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
