“Not What Your Team Expects”: Sunil Gavaskar Reignites Virat Kohli’s Strike Rate Row

Royal Challengers Bengaluru star batter Virat Kohli is currently the highest run-scorer in the ongoing IPL 2024 but there has been a lot of debate over his strike rate. Kohli has scored 430 runs in 9 matches at a strike rate of 145.76 but there have been several occasions that fans and experts thought that he could have paced his innings better. Kohli was once again the top-scorer for his side with a 43-ball-51 against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Thursday but his strike rate of 118.60 once again reignited the chatter around the topic with legendary Indian cricket team batter Sunil Gavaskar joining the conversation.

Gavaskar said that although Kohli did score an important half-century, he was not able to hit a boundary for quite some time and his knock was not something that his team “expects from him”.

“In the middle, he just seemed to have lost touch. I am not sure of the exact numbers, but I think from 31-32 to the time he got out, he did not hit a boundary. So at the end of the day, when he got out when you are facing the strike in the first ball of the innings and you get out in the 14th or the 15th over, you have got strike rate of 118, that’s not what your team expects from you,” Gavaskar said on Star Sports.

Thankfully for RCB, their bowling unit finally clicked and restricted SRH for 171/8 while defending a total of 206/7. Had the Bengaluru side gone on to lose the contest, Kohli’s snarling half-century would’ve emerged as a bigger talking point for fans and experts.

After the game, RCB captain Faf du Plessis was happy as his side returned to winnings ways, especially considering players other than Virat pitching in with the bat.

“Last two games, we’ve shown great signs of fight. SRH game was 270 plus, we got 260. KKR game as well – 1 run. We’ve been close for a while, but you need to win matches to get confidence as a group. Will sleep easier tonight. You can’t speak confidence into the group, can’t fake confidence into the group. Only thing that gives confidence is performances. The competition is so strong, the teams are so strong that you’ll get hurt if you’re not at 100 percent.

“More guys scoring runs now. First half of the tournament only Virat was scoring runs. Greeny scoring runs now will be massive for him. We know that Chinnaswamy, that’s been a big frustration for us. It’s a difficult ground to bowl at. We’ve tried to find a recipe for it, but it’s tough,” he said.

But, there’s still a long way to go for the Royal Challengers in this IPL.