Royal Challengers Bengaluru player Virat Kohli scored 72-ball 113 runs against Rajasthan Royals at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur. However, on his way to his three-figure mark. While the innings received plaudits there was also a fair amount of criticism thrown at the knock and Kohli’s strike rate during the innings was under scrutiny.
Kohli on his way to a three-figure mark bagged an unwanted record to his name, He equalled Manish Pandey’s record of the slowest century in the history of IPL in terms of balls (67).
However, Kohli’s childhood coach Rajkumar Sharma would slam strike rate critics and would go on to say it is a lobby trying to push an “agenda”. “Look, this is a lobby which is running an agenda. They’re just pushing an agenda, and as fans or true analysts, we don’t care about their agenda. See, the king will always be the king. A person who knows even the ‘C’ of cricket would never do such nonsense,” Sharma said speaking on India News.
Apart from Kohli none of the other batters could reach the 50-mark in the innings and RCB ended up only making 182 which RR would chase comfortably in the second innings. “People who are saying this nonsense, I think they don’t know the context of the match, what the situation of the match was and how the team was struggling,” Sharma observed.
“They speak only to be in the news. Just because whenever you speak about a normal player, it does not bring you in the news headlines, but if you speak about a player like Virat Kohli, it brings you in the news headlines,” he added.
The 35-year-old so far in five games has amassed 316 runs at a strike rate of 146.33 and an average of 105.33. The likes of Glenn Maxwell, Faf du Plessis, Rajat Patidar and Cameron Green have all been going through poor run of form in the season so far. Kohli has contributed to 36.36 per cent of the team total in the ongoing tournament.
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