Even while going through the IPL 2022 for Royal Challengers Bangalore, Virat Kohli has his one eye set on the 2022 T20 World Cup. RCB strength and conditioning coach Shankar Basu, who was with the Indian team till the 2019 World Cup in the UK, revealed the legendary batter is trying to gain muscles in his forearms to hit the ball consistently over the large outfields in Australia.
“Virat is mainly… we are trying to build muscle mass. We are trying to get that mass. T20 also requires a lot of explosive moves. Force production is a byproduct of T20.
“It’s a mandatory thing for him to be strong. He is also having the World Cup round the corner. So as a long-distance call as well as a short-distance call, it’s the same,”
said Basu in a video published by the Royal Challengers.
Irrespective of the hosting nation, Kohli’s historic playing mantra in the shortest format has been to get himself in, sneak the ball into gaps, bat deep into the innings before exploding. Even in Australia, where the general consensus says the ability to muscle the ball hard would be paramount, Kohli has tended to stick to his method.
At a decent sample size of 11 T20I matches for India, the right-hander boasts 451 runs in Australia with a stellar average of 64.42 and a very healthy strike-rate of 144.55. He has hit five half-centuries in his 10 innings, including a best of 90 not out.
Yet, the idea to take his game to the next level and enhance his boundary percentage ahead of the marquee event seems to be driving Kohli, who, Basu says, trains with a “child-like enthusiasm” to get fitter and stronger even now. The renowned trainer believes the 33-year-old hasn’t at all lost his zeal to improve physically from his early days as a Premier League and India cricketer.
“What excites me is he comes with a child-like enthusiasm even today. “What I saw in him when he was 19 or 20, in fact, the enthusiasm has not come down even by one per cent. In fact, I can say it has gone up one per cent. The drive and that steely resolve he has got is so inspirational for everyone.”
Basu said.
A strenuous training regime, including time spent well in the nets, is Kohli’s means to try and avert a downward spiral his career has been on over the last couple of years. The batter is currently going through his lowest career vibe in international and IPL cricket, with his last hundred in any competitive fixture dating back to November 2019.
In the ongoing edition of the Premier League, Virat has averaged a horrible 20.66 with a pedestrian strike-rate of 116.25 for his 186 runs over 10 innings. He has made only one score of fifty or more in the tournament, which happened to be his slowest half-century in a dwindling IPL career.
Struggles for the RCB, however, don’t pose a threat as yet to Kohli’s spot in the Indian T20I side, for which he has a decent record since the start of 2020. In this timeframe, the batter has made 663 runs from 19 innings while averaging 47.35 and striking at 136.13.
The Indian team management, led by head coach Rahul Dravid and skipper Rohit Sharma, are highly unlikely to react to Kohli’s RCB failings and consider dropping him from their T20 World Cup plans.
