IND v WI 2022: Don’t think Virat Kohli is going through a lean patch, says Vikram Rathour ahead of WI T20Is

India to play 3 T20Is on Feb 16, 18 and 20 against West Indies in Kolkata.

Indian team batting coach Vikram Rathour felt that former captain Virat Kohli isn't going through a lean patch with the bat, despite his extremely poor results in the recent ODI series against West Indies. Kohli's fans are still waiting for him to score a century in international cricket since November 2019.

In fact, despite contributing with half-centuries in this period, Kohli has struggled to carry on when he was needed and now the pressure is more on the former captain to score big runs, after the drama that was created during his sacking as ODI captain.

The 33-year-old, whose tenure as India captain across formats came to an end last month, had a disappointing run in the recently-concluded three-match ODI series with a total score of 26 runs at an average of 8.6 with a best of 18.

But Rathour said that the team management is confident that the right-hander will be back amongst runs in the T20I series.

“I don’t think he’s going through a lean phase. I understand he had a poor series against the West Indies (in ODIs) but no conversation as such. He’s batting really well in the nets and the kind of preparation he’s putting in. We are waiting for… I’m certain that in one of these innings he will be back among runs,” Rathour said in a media interaction before the India- West Indies T20Is.

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In ODIs, Kohli last scored a century against the West Indies in August 2019, in Port of Spain, and since then, he has had 10 scores of 50-plus but failed to convert them into a ton. In the last 12 months, he has been part of nine ODIs and scored a total of 271 runs in them.

The T20I series is part of the Indian team’s prep for the T20 World Cup in Australia and Rathour said he’s confident that the batters will put up a strong show Down Under.

“With the batting that we have, I don’t think we have any issues. All our batters are capable of batting well in those conditions. Of course, that is the focus at the moment. We are working towards the World Cup in Australia…unfortunately we are struggling a little bit with the injuries at the moment, few people are missing out.

Till we have everybody available it’s difficult to make sure what their role going to be. But so far that’s the focus. We have started our preparation for Australia,” he said.  

(PTI inputs)