Virat Kohli Was Motivated By Criticism: Former Royal Challengers Bengaluru wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik revealed how all the chatter around Virat Kohli’s strike rate this season spurred the legendary batter on.
There was a lot of discussion around Kohli’s strike rate this season, especially in the first half. Most of it stemmed from the century he scored against the Rajasthan Royals in Jaipur earlier this season.
In this match, Virat scored 113 runs on 72 balls, reaching 100 on 67 deliveries. This was the slowest century in the history of the IPL. In a season that was already shaping up to be the highest-scoring one, this inning stood out as an outlier.
This inning sparked a debate around Virat Kohli’s strike rate and whether he should even be a part of the India squad for the 2024 T20 World Cup.
Virat Kohli Was Motivated By Criticism
Dinesh Karthik, who retired from the IPL at the end of RCB’s IPL 2024 campaign, recently opened up about how Kohli loves to prove his critics wrong, and it was all the discussion around his strike rate that inspired him to do well this season.
“I can write a book on how he was this year. He started okay, but thanks to people like Simon (Doull) and a few others, they just really spurred him on. And you don’t want to see that side of Virat Kohli. I think he thrives on that. He is someone who inadvertently wants to hold on to certain things to do well,” Karthik told Cricbuzz.
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Virat Kohli had his best career IPL season in terms of strike rate, as the 35-year-old scored a whopping 741 runs with a strike rate of 154, winning the IPL Orange Cap for the second time in his career.
Karthik continued to say this about Virat:
“He loves proving people wrong, and even though he might not come out and say it, it really fuels his passion, and he’s like molten lava coming out. He’s fiery, and you don’t want to be anywhere close to it because you’re going to get burned for sure because he’s done this time and time again.”
Dinesh Karthik finally went on to credit Virat Kohli for all the success RCB has had in the IPL, saying,
“You can speak about RCB, the success, and all of that; it is not happening without that man. I’m not saying this with his batting. It’s the intimidating feeling that he gives when he’s on the field, the way he pushes fielders; if you ever had a mic in one of those timeouts, my god!”
After a dismal start to the season, with only one win in eight matches at the halfway point in the tournament, RCB bounced back by winning six matches in a row to qualify for the playoffs of the IPL 2024.
While they ended up losing in the Eliminator to the Rajasthan Royals, finishing in the top four was a brilliant feat from where they were at the start of the IPL 2024 season. As the best player in the team, Virat Kohli had a huge role to play in RCB’s late success.
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