IND vs PAK: 'It's Not Just The Magical Shots'- Stephen Fleming Reveals Secret Behind Virat Kohli's Historic Knock Against Pakistan

According to Stephen Fleming, Virat Kohli‘s unbroken 82, which helped India defeat Pakistan in Melbourne, stood out for two reasons. Two things are necessary to maximise run-scoring at the ground the size of the MCG: first, the ability to locate boundaries at whim in the second half; and second, the demonstration of high fitness levels.

Virat Kohli was 15 off 23 balls at one point. He would score 67 runs off his following 30 balls and 36 runs off his last 11 pitches. He scored an unbeaten 82 from 53 balls, including six fours and four sixes, to help India put the ten-wicket loss to Pakistan in the T20 World Cup in 2021 behind them.

The Intensity Is What I Like About Virat Kohli: Stephen Fleming

Virat Kohli took part in running 39 singles, eight twos (including two runs ran off a wide ball), and one three between the time Kohli and Hardik joined forces in the seventh over with the score reading 31 for 4 and the time R Ashwin struck the winning runs off the game’s last delivery (the free-hit that hit his stumps in the 20th over).

Since the beginning of the eleventh over, Kohli has only played four dots.

“The fitness in their running between the wickets was superb,” Fleming, the current head coach of the Chennai Super Kings and a former captain of New Zealand, stated.

“He’s getting a little bit older, but to be able to maintain that intensity, he’s always had an intensity around him, but the running between the wickets was vital.

“Those are the little things you don’t see and they upped the ante with that and they snuck quite a few runs putting the Pakistan players under pressure.

That intensity is what I like about Virat Kohli. It’s not just the magical shots like the six that he had [against Rauf], it’s the stuff in between, and that’s gamesmanship, it’s experience and it’s greatness.”

Stephen Fleming Feels Pakistan Could Have Been More Proactive

Fleming believed that Pakistan made mistakes with the ball in the last stages of the game as they attempted to win it. He believed that Haris Rauf, who let up 12 runs in his final two deliveries of the penultimate over, lost a trick by not bowling the wide yorker as is customary in death overs.

“I talk about the wide yorker because when you’re needing a boundary or sixes it’s very hard to hit the wide yorker if you can deliver it [right]. And I’ve seen him do it on big wide boundaries which can be protected,” Fleming said of Rauf.

“It was a tactic that wasn’t used by either side which surprised me. Especially when you get in front of the game and Pakistan were in front of the game. They were bossing that game.

“India needed to hit sixes to get back into the game and win it. So you bowl the best ball and the method of being right [in these conditions] was back of a length, but still use the wide yorker… at no stage did they go wide.

Haris Rauf, I thought he could have been a little bit more proactive with that and we might have seen a better result [for him]. But look, this is all in hindsight, he had brought a wonderful spell.”

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