Former captain of Royal Challengers Bangalore Virat Kohli played one of his most amazing T20 knocks in recent memory when his unbeaten 70 off 40 balls guided Royal Challengers Bangalore to a 9-wicket victory over the Gujarat Titans on Sunday. Kohli smashed his fourth half century of this season of IPL, taking his tally to 500 runs and thereby securing his position as the orange cap holder with an average of 71.4 and a strike rate of 147.4. Kohli has not done that badly, but as usual, the haters are criticizing him for the speed at which Kohli has scored runs, and he is a strike rate spinner. He has come under observation because of the poor performance of Royal Challengers Bangalore in the 2024 season of the Indian Premier League, more so after the game with Sunrisers Hyderabad, where he scored 51 runs in 43 balls.
After Kohli and Will Jackson successfully chased down 200 and the latter scored his first century of IPL with 100 runs in 41 balls, the former captain of RCB came up with an explosive response to his critics. Kohli slammed his doubters, questioning their position to make a statement from the box. He also pointed out how, after playing for 15 years, he knows his job, which is to make sure that his team wins the match, with most of it stemming from muscle memory.
The post-match comment of Virat Kohli created quite a stir as users on X were not impressed with his attitude. However, Kohli got support from the former cricketers of Team India, Mohammad Kaif and Navjot Singh Sidhu. During the second match of Sunday, double-headed both Kaif and Sidhu while doing commentary talk about the debates surrounding the strike rate of Kohli jumping to the help of the former captain of team India.
Kaif said all I hear about these days is the strike rate. It is important to slow down because the economy rate of the spinner is lower than that of the first bowler because they bowl in the middle overs.
Navjot Singh Sidhu said people think Kohli is a god, but he is a human, so he is going to play like a human. Rather than nitpicking why people don’t look at the fact that Virat has 80 centuries, that is his strength and weakness; he has none, and if we look carefully today, he played off the backfoot and lifted the spinner. Can anyone tell me how many players can hit a left-arm spinner against the spin and how many of the players can do it so that Kohli has a presence and cherishes his wicket? What else do you people want him to do?”
