Former Pakistani captain Rashid Latif has shared his opinion on the ongoing century drought of world-class batters like Virat Kohli from India and Steve Smith from Australia. Both the batters have not scored a Test century for a long time and it has worried their fans.
Smith last reached the triple-figure mark in Manchester in 2019 with his epic 211 while Kohli last scored a hundred in the Bangladesh Pink Ball Test in Kolkata that same year en-route to the match-winning 136.
The issue was raised once in the ongoing Test series between Pakistan and Australia after Smith scored 59 in the first innings of the Lahore Test. His other two scores were 78 and 72. While, these are not bad numbers for any batter, for a batter of the caliber of Steve Smith, these scores don’t do justice to his ability to score centuries at will.
Speaking on the YouTube show Caught Behind, Latif opined that players like Kohli and Smith have become acclimatized to batting at home and to conditions where there are any fielders in their desired area of hitting.
"I feel they have got a lot many easy pitches there (home). They are those kinds of players who need places and conditions. Look at Steve Smith, the two boundaries he hit were worth watching..so that is the kind of field placements he needed - no cover or mid-wicket or the area in front of him remains vacant. And once he starts scoring runs, fielders are placed according and he gets bogged down," he said.
It has been 72 innings since Virat Kohli scored his 136 against Bangladesh. He has crossed the fifty-run mark 22 times but is yet to score his 71st international ton.
"Fact is there is a lot of pressure here and he is actually playing better here than he was during the Ashes. I think were are affecting his run-scoring, reducing it by 25-30 runs which adds to his century-less streak for every innings. He should have gotten a century. For Virat Kohli as well, the pitch factor is there again. But it will come and once it starts you just begin counting," Latif added.
Smith still has a chance to score a century as he is playing the third and final Test in Pakistan, but Kohli needs to wait until the end of IPL 2022 to get chances to make his 71st international century.
