South African batting legend AB de Villiers feels Virat Kohli is looking relaxed and happy this season after relinquishing captaincy roles with the Indian Premier League franchise and also with the national team.
Kohli, who slammed 82* off 49 balls in RCB’s IPL 2023 opener against Mumbai Indians, stepped down as RCB captain the after 2021 season.
After the T20 World Cup in November 2021, Virat also quit India’s T20I captaincy but the selectors sacked him as ODI skipper citing that they don’t want different individuals leading the white-ball teams. By January 2022, he gave up the Test captaincy as well following the series loss in South Africa.
With no burden of captaincy on his shoulder, De Villiers reckons Kohli seems more relaxed now.
“I have not seen much change, everything is similar. The technique looks solid; he has got good balance at the crease. He is still that ‘busy’ player with a lot of energy at the wicket. I just feel, this season he has come in looking really fresh. I have seen some of his interviews where he is laughing more than ever…,” De Villiers told reporters.
“I think letting the captaincy go last season played a big role in him relaxing. He was a fantastic captain but he did it for a long period of time both internationally and also at the IPL which can be daunting. You never get time off to chill or spend with family or have a laugh with some friends. I think that is his mantra for this season, just to go out and have fun, keep smiling,” he added.
“When he is having fun that natural talent takes over and he scores runs at ease which he did in that first innings. I think the best is yet to come and we are going to see some fireworks,” he further said.
India batter Suryakumar Yadav took the cricketing world by storm with his batting exploits in the shortest format of the game last year. However, he is currently enduring a lean patch and came into the IPL 2023 on the back of a forgettable ODI series against Australia at home, registering three successive golden ducks.
Talking about Surya, De Villiers advised the Mumbai Indians batter to focus on what has worked for him in the past.
“He is probably in that phase now where he needs to do something. But the secret of it all is not to panic and not to change your game plan. He has got to stick to what has been working for him over the years. Yes, maybe, he can try and remember ‘what are my basics’ or ‘what did I do very well when I was just consistently scoring runs’ and because obviously he took his game to a completely different level,” he stated.
“It is not a bad thing just to come a level down and spend a little time in there before you pop out again. You cannot always score 100 off 40 balls – it is not always going to happen. That is something I had to learn the hard way with the Chinnaswamy crowd going, expecting me to score a hundred in every game. I sometimes had to tell myself, ‘you know what AB let’s be honest here, you are not reading the ball very. Just make sure you go run-a-ball and give Virat the strike or just get someone else on’. And then slowly and surely I get one good shot and then I am back in the game,” he said.
“There will always be a sign when you get into good form; there will be a bad delivery from the bowler or you will hit a good straight drive and then you can be say ‘hold on, I am back in form and let’s hurt the bowlers’. You just have to manage the gears – I call them gears between first and the fifth gear, ‘where I am at the moment’. He is probably in the second gear at the moment. Respect the fact that you are in second gear, find a way to get to the third and you can push from there,” De Villiers remarked.
(With PTI Inputs)
