Veteran batter Virat Kohli recalled an honest conversation with former head coach Ravi Shastri about his batting after the difficult 2014 England tour. Kohli said that Shastri joined the Indian team as director in 2014, a time when he was struggling after scoring only 134 runs in 10 innings during the Test series in England.
Speaking on the One8 YouTube channel, the 37-year-old revealed that before India’s 2014-15 tour of Australia, Shastri asked him a simple question: whether he was scared of facing short-pitched deliveries (bouncers). Kohli replied that he was not. Shastri then told him that if he wasn’t afraid, he should stand outside his crease while batting. Remembering that conversation, Kohli said:
“When he came in, I had those failures in England in Test cricket, and I was quite sensitive about it. So he didn’t push me immediately. He knew to find a space and to first build a relationship.”
”So I think over the course of the next two, two-and-a-half months, we played a lot of white-ball cricket, played in England, played in India, and the one thing that he told me when we had to go play in Australia, he asked me a simple question: ‘Are you scared to face the bouncer?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ He said, ‘You stand outside your crease.’”
Kohli said that if he had continued using the batting style he was most comfortable with, he might not have achieved the success that came later in his career. The right-handed batter explained that he followed the changes suggested by Shastri and those adjustments helped him perform brilliantly on the Australia tour. He said:
“If I had only relied on what I knew, I would have been finished. Ravi Shastri told me to make changes, and I trusted him. That helped me score 700 runs in Australia in 2014-15 and play shots I had never attempted before. It was all about trust.”
During the 2014-15 Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia, Virat Kohli was in outstanding form. He scored 692 runs in just eight innings at an impressive average of 86.50, including four centuries and one half-century, making it one of the best series of his Test career.
“He Made Me Catch His Attention”: Virat Kohli Reflects on First Major Exchange With Ravi Shastri in 2014
In the same conversation, Virat Kohli said that he had met Ravi Shastri several times even before Shastri became the director of the Indian cricket team. Shastri worked as the team’s director for about eight months, from India’s 2014 tour of England until the 2015 World Cup. He later became India’s head coach in 2017 and remained in the role until 2021. Kohli said:
“I had met him (Ravi Shastri) a few times before we actually started working together in the team, and he came into the 2014 England tour before the white-ball series started, after the Test series, because we needed a bit of taking control of the ship, kind of redirecting in a way that, you know, the system is set.”
Kohli further said that Ravi Shastri left a strong impression on him after joining the Indian dressing room. He recalled being surprised by the power and intensity of Shastri’s voice when he spoke to the team for the first time. Remembering that moment, Kohli said:
“After the 2014 England tour, I was really down. When Ravi Shastri first spoke in the dressing room, his intensity genuinely shook me. I had never experienced someone speaking with that much conviction face-to-face, and he immediately grabbed my attention.”
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