Former Australian pacer Brett Lee says that a strong Virat Kohli means a strong team and he suggested him a break from cricket to freshen up his mind.
Brett Lee, the former Australian pacer gives a couple of suggestions to Virat Kohli who is going through a rough patch of his life. He says that Kohli can take a break to freshen up his mind and work on a few things.
He has been the best batter in recent years but now he is mostly out of the color. Kohli’s average campaign ended in the IPL 2022 when RCB lost the qualifier 2 to RR by seven wickets in Ahmedabad on Friday.
“Do I say it is a concern, I do. I would like him (Kohli) to be scoring more runs of course,”
Lee told PTI on Saturday when asked about Kohli’s prolonged lean patch.
Kohli, who hasn’t scored a single century in the last three years is going through his career’s worst phase, having scored only 341 runs in the 16 games of IPL 2022 with an average of 22.73. In the ongoing IPL, he opened most of the games for RCB.
In the second qualifier of IPL, Kohli faced a fast-rising delivery from Prasidh Krishna which was outside the off-stump to give a knick behind the stumps to the skipper Sanju Samson.
“The hardest thing is when Virat Kohli doesn’t score runs, generally the team doesn’t do well. When we see Kohli had that purple patch, when he got 800-900 runs in that season (IPL 2016) his team (Royal Challengers Bangalore) fared pretty well. We want more from Kohli.
“A strong Kohli is a strong team. Unfortunately, he missed out in the semis; he could not get his team to cross the line of his own bat, getting less than 10 runs.
“Maybe (it is) a chance for Kohli to go back and try work on a few things and maybe just have a rest from cricket. Just get away and just freshen up the mind,”
added Lee, who is the brand ambassador of ‘Sportsbet.io’.
At the same time last year, Lee had picked the Australian Pat Cummins and Virat Kohli as the best bowler and batters in the world.
“When you look at the recent greats, it is hard to look past Virat Kohli,”
Lee had said when asked who his favorite Test batter is in an interview with ICC.
Rising fast-bowling talent in India
The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 has produced the young pacers like Avesh Khan, Mohsin Khan, Kamran Malik, Mukesh Choudhary, and Arshdeep Singh, and the 45-year-old who has 310 Test wickets believes that this could be handy for India when they will play the T20 World Cup in Australia.
“The two Khan boys (Mohsin and Avesh) have got real talent. The one thing that Indian cricket is producing is a nice catalog of fast bowlers. I like that.
“They have got good spin options as well but certainly if you are looking forward to the T20 World Cup in Australia, you want guys that can bowl fast on the fast bouncy wickets,”
said Lee.
Umran Malik, the young gun should feature in the longest format of the game.
One of the best findings in the IPL 2022 is Umran Malik who consistently bowled over 150 kmph and ended with 22 wickets for the SRH.
“Look, he has been fantastic, what Umran Malik delivers is pure pace. I wish him well and I am hoping that he gets the opportunity to play the longer format of the game as well,”
Lee said.