India Tour of South Africa: Ashish Nehra Predicts Virat Kohli’s Mentality and Understanding Will Help Him Script Another Masterclass Knock

'We haven't seen the Kohli whom we saw in 2-3 years but once he gets out of this zone, he will be unstoppable.'- Ashish Nehra.

New Delhi: Virat Kohli didn’t make the best of starts against South Africa in the 1st Test at the Centurion on Sunday as the red-ball game captain despite making a fine start, gave away his wicket cheaply to Lungi Ngidi. India with Mayank Agarwal’s 60 and KL Rahul’s unbeaten ton helped the Men in Blue score 272/3 on Day 1. Former India pacer, Ashish Nehra advises the former white-ball captain to leave the outfacing deliveries aimed around the fourth stump and believes his masterclass knock isn’t far away.

”You expect runs from someone like Kohli. He would be unhappy with his performance. But if you look at the stats, Kohli has scored runs in the previous away series in England conditions. He has the hunger to score hundreds and double hundreds and he would be a bit unhappy with himself today,” told Cricbuzz.

“Looking at the way he’s been dismissed, it’s a bit of concern. South Africa bowlers made Kohli play a loose shot and this has been a problem lately. Kohli has been giving his wickets to bowlers. Looking at today’s dismissal, we understand how Kohli has been out facing swinging deliveries aimed around the fourth stump. In such cases, you need the batter to leave those deliveries..we saw that from KL Rahul today,” Nehra said.

The ex India international believes that Kohli’s mentality and understanding of the game will help him get his big knock, which is only a matter of time.

“You expect Kohli to play those 135-150 kmph deliveries on the front foot but when the ball starts moving and gets bounce too, any player would face difficulties. We haven’t seen the Kohli whom we saw in 2-3 years but once he gets out of this zone, he will be unstoppable. But Kohli’s mentality and understanding of the game will help him score that much-awaited knock. He had scored 74 in the Adelaide Test against Australia this year and another such knock isn’t far away,” he added.