Bipin Dani
In the rain affected World Test Championship Final against New Zealand at Southampton, Team India captain could score 44 and 13 runs in both the innings.
India lost the final. Incidentally, Kohli, who has 71 international hundreds has currently gone 47 innings without a hundred across all three formats.
Compared to Sachin, whose gap between his 99th and the 100th international century was 371 days. Virat’s wait is much more.
Is it a red signal for him ? Former India captain Dilip Vengsarakar doesn’t think so. Speaking exclusively, he says, “Virat is a great batsman, one of the best in the world at present.
Every batsman goes through the patch where the batsman looks very good for a long innings but the three-figure mark somehow eludes him”.
“For me the impact of an innings on a team’s overall performance matters more than scoring centuries.
We are obsessed with individual records & milestones but I give more importance to the team’s performance and not so much to the individual milestones which never gives the correct picture of the contribution of batsmen”, he said.
Endorsing his views, the former conservationist and ex-cricketer Saad bin Jung says, “I don’t believe in comparisons for the simple reason that whilst you choose a better batsman, the other one comes out lesser. And there is no way that I will call Sachin or Virat a lesser player”.
“Let’s just say that the two defined crickets in their own way. Paved a path forward with newer and more effective techniques. They are path breakers and comparison will demean either one”.
“I think the biggest change I have seen is that during Sachin time the wickets in general were a batting paradise.
Of late through Virat’s career the wickets came back with a character of their own. There was more spin and seam. Can we say today that we have a better player than Virat in india? We don’t.
Virat is coming out to bat with huge pressure on his back. He had no Dravid, VVS, Gangly etc to support him. He doesn’t play for himself. He plays for the team and is always there to hold fort when the chips are down”.
“Virat has many roles now as captain. I feel we cannot do without him. Why isn’t he getting his hundreds? The older you get the more difficult it gets to take an innings through. You lose that instinct to attack recklessly. And so on….”, Jung concluded.
