Virat Kohli became a butt of jokes on X after the talismanic Team India batter began his 2024 T20 World Cup campaign on a disappointing note on Tuesday.
View this post on Instagram
View this post on Instagram
The Delhi-born cricketer, who holds the record for scoring the maximum runs in T20 World Cups, lost his wicket for 1 off 5 deliveries against Ireland at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York, experiencing a rare failure in the elite International Cricket Council (ICC) event he has dominated for years.
On a lively pitch that was aiding fast bowlers, Virat Kohli slashed hard at the ball delivered by Mark Adair. However, he could only get a thick edge and Benjamin White who was standing at third man did the rest.
With Virat Kohli perishing for 1, he recorded his lowest score in the T20 World Cup.
Moreover, one must not forget that it was Virat Kohli's debut game as an opener in the tournament. Previously, he used to bat at No.3. But the Indian think tank, including captain Rohit Sharma and head coach Rahul Dravid, decided to promote him up the order after Virat Kohli lit up the 2024 Indian Premier League (IPL) with his consistent performance as an opener in April and May.
During the 17th edition of the tournament, Virat Kohli made 741 runs in 15 matches, thus becoming the only batter to cross the 700-run barrier this year.
With this, Virat Kohli won the Orange Cap for the second time in the history of the IPL, having previously bagged it in 2016.
In 2016, Virat Kohli struck a phenomenal 973 runs, which remains a record in the event.
Despite the 35-year-old's failure against Ireland, former India captain Sunil Gavaskar showed optimism about Virat Kohli delivering the goods in the crunch match against Pakistan on Sunday.
“The way I look at it is…great players like Steve Smith, Virat Kohli, Babar Azam and Joe Root. They fail in one match; they wanna make up for it in the next match. They want to score double the runs. So whatever runs he might not have gotten (against Ireland), you know, he wants to score double the runs. And who better to score double the runs than against Pakistan,” Sunil Gavaskar said on Star Sports.
Meanwhile, his former Team India and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) teammate Dinesh Karthik explained the reasons behind the former's struggles with the bat during the COVID-19 era.
For the unversed, Virat Kohli had a nearly three-year barren run where he went without scoring a hundred from November 2019 to September 2022 before breaking the jinx against Afghanistan in the Asia Cup that year.
“Very disarming for a start when you don't play with crowds. It took us sometime when we played in IPL without any crowds, it was very weird. When you know you hit a shot, you feel like you are playing in a domestic game. It very much feels like that, there is nobody around to clap, no sounds. At times, you only hear some claps from the dressing room. It is very weird and it is very hard for people who have played international cricket consistently. I really feel one of Virat Kohli's reasons for him not to have done as well as he generally does during that COVID phase is the fact there was no crowd around,” Dinesh Karthik told Cricbuzz.
“He is someone who completely gets enamored and you know likes getting pushed by crowds and then the likes of Hardik Pandya, you can keep naming big names from India and other parts of the country as well. For Virat Kohli, I can say that would have definitely played a massive part, just playing to nobody it would feel weird. It is one thing playing to a TV audience, which is great but you don't hear them clapping for you. It is a very different feeling to play in front of no one,” he explained.
Earlier this month, he became the first cricketer to claim four ICC ODI Player of the Year awards. The International Cricket Council (ICC) also named him in last year's Men's ODI Team of the Year.
Sharing a video, the ICC showcased Virat Kohli's accomplishments in 2023 before presenting him with the award and a special cap.
It is worth noting that no other player in the history of cricket has won five ICC awards, while Virat Kohli has already picked up ten with the possibility of a few more trophies not being ruled out.
Team India's batting mainstay, Virat Kohli, delivered the goods for the Rohit Sharma-led side in last year's Cricket World Cup as he emerged as the leading run-scorer in the quadrennial event.
He scored 765 runs with three centuries in the premier ODI competition, earning the Player of the Tournament award in the ICC World Cup.
Overall, Virat Kohli featured in 27 ODIs in the previous year, where the 35-year-old made 1,377 runs with an exceptional average of 72.47 and a highly impressive strike rate of 99.13.
En route to his 24 innings in 27 matches in 2023, he smashed six hundreds and eight half-centuries.
