Former Pakistan speedster Shoaib Akhtar believes if he were playing today, he would have tried to distract India skipper Virat Kohli in order to get the latter’s wicket.
“With Virat if you fight, he gets more focused. So to bowl him out, I would try to get him to lose focus. I would try to get into his head. At my extreme pace, I would have instigated him to pull me or play a cut because he doesn’t have these two shots,” Akhtar said while speaking in the latest episode of ESPNcricinfo Videocast as quoted by IANS.
“I know he loves to drive, so again at my extreme pace, I would get him to drive and would have kept talking to him in between. Something like what (James)Anderson did to him in England,” he added.
Akhtar believes he and Kohli would have been good friends off the field and bitter-rivals while playing against each other.
“We are both Punjabis with a big heart. We would have been best of friends off-field and fierce enemies on-field,” said the Rawalpindi Express.
Kohli’s records, especially in the white-ball format, are staggering. The classy right-hander averages above 50 in all forms of international cricket. In Tests, he has scored 7240 runs at an average of 53.62 and in ODIs, he has scored 11867 runs at an average of almost 60. In the shortest format, Kohli has played 82 matches in which he has scored 2794 runs.
Kohli is constantly rated as the best batsman in the world because of his adaptability to different situations and different formats.