Former Australia captain Greg Chappell has given some words of wisdom to superstar Indian batsman Virat Kohli ahead of the upcoming all-important World Cup 2023.
India are hosting the ODI World Cup after 12 years, and will be looking to end their decade-long ICC title drought, the last ICC trophy for the senior men’s team coming in 2013 in the Champions Trophy.
With a couple of batters coming from injury – KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer – and the likes of Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, and Hardik Pandya showing inconsistent form in recent times, all the weight of expectations and responsibilities will once again be on the shoulders of Virat Kohli to take India through in the long tournament at home.
For that, Chappell said, Virat Kohli will need to be “mentally fresh” heading into the WC 2023, where India will kick-start their campaign on October 8 against Australia in Chennai.
Speaking with RevSportz, Greg Chappell advised Kohli: “Virat is in that stage of his career where the opposition knows him inside out and he knows how hard it is to score runs at that level. It requires a special effort to score runs, and for that, you need to decompress yourself and just keep it simple.
“Virat also needs to go into these games mentally fresh and he knows what he needs to do. He has always prepared himself well. If he can achieve that, he will have a very good tournament.”
Virat Kohli’s knock vs Pakistan was the perfect exhibition of batting: Chappell
India will be facing Pakistan in the marquee clash of the tournament on October 14 in Ahmedabad.
Greg Chappell recalled Virat Kohli’s epic knock against Pakistan at the MCG last year and lavished praise for the batter’s orthodox style of batting.
“The way he played against Pakistan in T20 WC 2022 was the perfect exhibition of batting at that level. What I liked about it was that it was basic cricket. He played basically every ball on its merit and did to the bowlers what he wanted to do. He was the man in charge. It was a batting masterclass by the master himself,” the Aussie commentator added.
Before the World Cup, Kohli’s big assignment is the Asia Cup and 3 ODIs against Australia.