New Zealand vs India 2020: MSK Prasad Defends Under-Fire Virat Kohli

An outgoing chief selector of the Indian National Cricket Team, MSK Prasad has come out to defend Indian captain Virat Kohli after the latter had a poor batting display in the entire New Zealand tour.

India’s skipper and the number one batsman in the world, Kohli is going through a rough patch in international cricket at the moment. Precisely, he is not having a good time with the bat and the century master has been relatively quiet for a long time now.

Kohli had the worst series as a captain with the bat in the recently-concluded India-New Zealand ODI series, as he could score only 75 runs in the three games he played. This was by far his poorest performance in a bilateral ODI series since his captaincy debut in the format.

His return to form is now long-awaited and spectators hoped for his comeback in the Test series.

However, he was cheaply dismissed in all the four innings of both the Test matches.

MSK Prasad Defends ‘Run Machine’ Virat Kohli:

“We are talking about a legend who has been a run-machine for many years. He is also a human and he can have one odd series where he doesn’t perform. One series should not go against him, he has been a phenomenal player,” Prasad said.

Throughout the New Zealand tour, Kohli managed to score just a single fifty across eleven innings in all three international formats.

Kohli has now gone 22 international innings without scoring a hundred.

Since hitting 136 vs Bangladesh in November 2019, Kohli has now failed to touch the three-figure mark in 22 international innings on the trot, capping his worst run of form since the horrid 2014 tour to England.

Virat Kohli banking on positives:

In his more than an 11-year-old international career, there have been only two other phases where Kohli has failed to score a hundred in more than 19 innings. The 1st bad phase of Kohli’s career spanned from February to September 2011 when he failed to hit a hundred in 24 consecutive innings.

During this period, Kohli’s overall batting average dipped sharply from 48 before the 2011 World Cup to 39 in a space of seven months.

In 2014, Kohli endured another worst period with the bat in international cricket when he failed to score a century for 25 successive innings from February to October. This included the horror England tour where he could score only 134 runs in five Tests.

Also Read: Virat Kohli’s Form Is A Big Factor For India: VVS Laxman