India captain Virat Kohli is not seeing his best days in the ongoing tour of New Zealand. The right-hander registered scores of 2 and 19 in the first Test in Wellington. His form has raised concerns for Team India, especially after his side suffered a batting collapse in the first Test in both the innings, and lost the match by 10 wickets. Former India cricketer Gautam Gambhir believes Kohli is a player who needs to be “emotionally charged” to put on a good performance.
“He (Virat) was asked before the start of this tour if he saw it as a revenge series after losing to them in the 2019 World Cup semifinal. At the time Kohli replied, ‘Even if you want to think of revenge these guys are so nice that you can’t get into that zone.’ I am not sure if this part of Virat Kohli really works for him,” Gambhir wrote in his column for Times of India.
The former left-hander further said that the ‘nice guys’ emotion does not work for the Indian skipper. “He is at his best when he is riled up, when he has a contest. Revenge may be an exaggerated thought but I am not sure of “nice guys” emotion either,” he said.
“I think Kohli is wired up to be that emotionally charged sportsperson who can play a cover drive with calmness of a sage and then lead his troops like an animated cheerleader,” he further opined.
Kohli, after the first Test, talked about his dip in form and insisted that he is not concerned about it. “I know the (perception) outside changes with one inning,” he had said at the post-match presentation ceremony. “I would probably be on the outside right now.”
“But we are a side that has never really paid attention to the outside noise and we will continue to do that. If we had been listening to things from outside, we would have been back at No. 7 or 8 again. It doesn’t matter to us what people outside are saying,” he added.
