Srinagar: Former Australia captain Aaron Finch has shutted out the debate surrounding Virat Kohli’s strikerate and has given perfect reason why Kohli has to play like he does.
Finch reserved high praise for India captain Rohit Sharma for taking it upon himself to change the way India’s top-order bats in white-ball cricket but added that it was only possible because he had someone like Virat Kohli waiting in the changing room.
“When you look, when Rohit’s made that conscious decision, he’s had Virat coming in behind him at number three. So there’s an ability for him to say, you know what, I’ve got the guy behind that will fix any mistakes that I make. But you can’t have everybody in the team just looking to swing for the fences from ball one. So that’s a really, that’s a good question. And I understand that Rohit’s done that, and he’s been very successful in doing it,” Finch was quoted by PTI.
“Maybe if his strike rate goes from 140 to 150, he can absolutely do that. No issues whatsoever. But how many times has he been in a situation where he’s had to almost dig RCB out of the hole because everybody else has fallen around him? So, like I said before, I would bank the runs every day of the week from a top-three player. Because that gives the rest of the order so much freedom. That gives you the option to be more aggressive than the other batters,” he explained.
About Kohli changing his approach, he said, “Well, the question you have to ask yourself is, do you want 700 or 800 runs or are you happy with 400? Because if you want Virat to strike higher, he can absolutely do that. But with that comes a higher risk and the consistency will go down”.
“So I don’t think that there’s a huge need to change. Maybe it’s changing the tempo up slightly. But overall, I would bank on his runs every single day of the week. And then you start to build your team around somebody like that.”