Virat Kohli has been told by former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar to play a little conservatively on hard pitches in New York ahead of India’s ICC T20 World Cup match against the USA.
This year’s third Group A game of the T20 World cup between India and USA will be played at Nassau County International Stadium on Wednesday. The last time they met, India won a low-scoring thriller over Pakistan by six runs.
USA beat Pakistan in the Super Over. With two wins in two games, India top the group with four points. The US is second on the log with similar win-loss record but an inferior net run rate.
In his first two matches against Ireland and Pakistan, Virat – the highest ever scorer in this event’s history – only managed scores of one and four respectively. He got out twice while playing aggressively each time.
The competition comes after an incredible Indian Premier League (2024) season for Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), where he led from the front scoring 741 runs at an average of 61.75 and a strike rate of 154.69 in 15 innings including five centuries, a hundred, which was also his best strike rate ever in IPL career as he batted quite effectively against spinners being more aggressive with them this time around.
Sanjay Manjrekar during his talk with ESPNCricinfo said that although critics accused him of having low strikeout rates for long time, which made him change his style a bit; however “old Virat” would have done better on tough tracks like those at New York where it is not easy to score fast due to carefulness amongst batsmen about their batting averages or records…
“The problem with Virat Kohli is that there has been a lot of talk about his strike rate over the last two years, and he completely changed that during this IPL season. His strike rate had reached 150, although others had almost 200, but that is a different topic. He probably must have come to the T20 World Cup with that same mindset, but given the pitches, the old Virat Kohli would have been much better,” said Manjrekar.
“So basically I am of an opinion that someone should advise him to change his style back to what it was before and then another time when there are flat tracks” he concluded.
