‘He will have to concentrate extra hard’ – Salman Butt’s advice for Virat Kohli to end rough patch
Virat Kohli (Photo by Francois Nel/Getty Images)
India defeated South Africa in the first Test by 113 runs in Centurion and thus, India became the first Asian country to win a Test match at this venue. Indian pacers had a great day as they picked 18 out of 20 wickets in the match. Also, KL Rahul became only the second Indian opener to score a century in South Africa and won the player of the match award.
However, Virat Kohli’s lean patch continued in this match as well. He made 35 and 18 runs in both the innings of the game and he was dismissed in a similar manner while chasing a delivery outside of the off-stump. It has now been over 760 days since Kohli scored his last international century.
Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt suggested two ways that Kohli can use to come out of the lean patch in his recent YouTube video. Butt mentioned that either he should stop entertaining deliveries outside of the off-stump or he can go bonkers over these deliveries.
“There are only two ways Kohli can come out of this bad patch. Either he completely abandons the drive for a while and relies on other shots or he goes all out and tries to hit his way out of trouble. If he wants to play a long innings, he will have to concentrate extra hard to not drive balls outside the off stump. If he manages to do that, things could start to flow again. But it all depends on how he wants to do it,” he said.
Butt was also impressed with India’s bench strength that has defeated Australia in Brisbane and South Africa in Centurion.
“Kohli was not there in Australia (barring Adelaide) when India won. Rohit is missing from this series and India won here (in Centurion). Winning without star players shows India’s back-up strength and planning and how good the upcoming players are,” he said.
