"Virat Kohli has set the fitness bar for players worldwide": Waqar Younis 

Waqar heaped praise on Kohli's quest to keep bettering himself in all aspects of the game.

Virat Kohli | AFP Waqar Younis, the Pakistan pace legend and the country's current bowling coach, lauded India skipper Virat Kohli for being an inspiration for everyone else to follow when it comes to fitness in the cricketing fraternity. 

Kohli, Waqar says, has raised the bar for the players worldwide on how they need to train and the strict diets they should be following in order to maintain their performance levels across formats. 

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Even during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, Kohli has been sharing videos of him doing workout in the gym, ensuring he is leaving nothing to fate in times when cricketers' bodies will otherwise be harmed staying at home. 

Speaking about this aspect of Kohli's game in a chat at GloFans Twitter platform during 'Q20', Waqar couldn't help but shower praise on the modern-day batting great. 

"Virat Kohli has evolved the game and all the formats of the modern-day cricket including T20 cricket, one day suits him a lot and he is brilliant at test matches. But the biggest difference he brought to cricket that is followed and watched worldwide is his fitness. He has set a bar of fitness worldwide for players," he said. 

"I think it is hard to beat. I think for that reason also, you like everything about Virat Kohli. He is fit, he is always in your face, he wants to prove you that he is the best, he is a fighter, so that is why, we all like him," Waqar added.

Waqar also talked about the India-Pakistan rivalry, including matches in the ODI and T20I World Cups, where his countrymen have failed to defeat their arch-rivals even once. 

"Over the last few World Cups, Pakistan have not won against India. We did well in other formats, we did well in Test matches, but when it comes to World Cups and ODI Cricket, India has always had an upper hand on us. And they deserve it. I think they played better cricket than us," said the 48-year-old in response to a fans' question. 

Waqar recalled the 1996 World Cup quarterfinal and the 2003 World Cup group encounters against India which he was part of. 

"I remember in Bangalore ('96) and back in I think that was in Pretoria in 2003. I remember most of them and I think I have played a couple of them. So they were (Indians) a very good side and I think on that particular day they just came out with a very positive frame of mind, they played better cricket and played smartly. We did not play smartly; we had games in our hands."

The fast bowling great thinks Pakistan "threw away" those matches when things could really have been different with more effort. 

"If you look at the World Cup in 2011 and then of course back in `96 also we had the game in our hand, but it is just, we... we just threw it away," said Waqar. 

"It is hard to pinpoint why we do that, maybe, it`s just the pressure of the World Cup now because it happens so many times, it is just the psychological pressure on us that we just cannot really win against them but yeah, it`s very very difficult to pinpoint on one thing," he concluded. 

 
 

By Kashish Chadha - 07 Jul, 2020

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