The ongoing India vs Australia series has been poor for Indian captain Virat Kohli, who has failed with the bat in the five innings he has played so far. However, West Indian legend Brian Lara has said that even the best players in the world undergo a bad patch and hailed the right-hander as an "outstanding cricketer".
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Kohli, who had been in a great form this home season, scoring 309 runs against New Zealand and 655 against England, has scores of 0, 13, 12, 15, and 6 so far against Australia. The batsman has not been able to get amongst the runs, which is a bit of a concern, considering this is a huge series for India.
The first two Test matches might have been played on rank turners, where scoring was not easy, but the Indian captain even failed to score on Ranchi's flat deck too. He also suffered an injury in his right shoulder while fielding in the third Test. However, Lara said that such kind of things happens to all players, irrespective of the sport they play.
"Virat is an outstanding cricketer, he has led the charge. People look at Virat in amazement. All sportsmen, in team sports, fail more than they succeed. In football you score less goals than the number of matches you play," Sport360 quoted Lara, the only player to hit a 400 in Tests, as saying.
"In cricket, I have more scores under 40 than over 40. Eventually, Virat is going to taper off when opposing bowlers are going to get a hang of what he does and he is not going to be as successful. But that does not make him any lesser as a batsman," the former left-handed batsman said.
One agrees that Kohli is not able to score runs freely as he has done in other home series, but one feels that a big score is round the corner. Kohli has always led from the front, and with the series squared 1-1 and the third Test in fine balance, the India captain will hope to score some important runs if he has to bat in the fourth innings. Kohli will be more than desperate to score in both the innings of the fourth Test match in Dharamasala as well.
