The clamour for Virat Kohli to step away from cricket for a while is growing after each batting failure of the former India skipper. And as Kohli’s barren run continues, former India international Aakash Chopra believes the former RCB skipper is living a nightmare.
“Virat Kohli is living a nightmare, for some the nightmare gets over, the bad times get over. This nightmare is unfolding in front of millions of people. It is tough being Virat Kohli right now. It is tough being Virat Kohli. PERIOD. The kind of attention that he gets,” Aakash Chopra said.
Kohli’s scores thus far in the season have been 41, 12, 4, 48, 1, 12, 0, 0 and 9 – 128 runs an average of 16.00 and strike-rate of 119.63. “Today, I felt that his bat was made of edges. There was no fiddle. He got a couple of boundaries. He is trying everything. He is going hard at the ball. He is taking his time. But it’s just not working out. Two first-ball ducks. He has been dismissed six times in the first 10 balls,” Chopra added.
Kohli has now gone without reaching the half-century mark in the IPL in 13 innings and is without a triple-figure mark in his last 101 innings, highlighting the fact that Kohli’s lack of runs is not just a concern in the IPL, but overall as well, putting question marks over his international career – at least in the T20Is – considering the T20 World Cup later this year. RCB also slumped to their second straight defeat in the league. They had a terrible game before the RR game, getting shot down for 68 against Sunrisers Hyderabad and yesterday, the batting imploded once again as they were bundled out for 115, chasing 145 to win.
