Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) analyst Freddie Wilde praised Virat Kohli’s sharp cricketing instincts, noting that the star batter often picks up on details that even data might miss. While Kohli doesn’t delve into statistics every day, Wilde said he regularly shares valuable insights during team meetings—especially when discussing opposing bowlers and their likely tactics.
Wilde added that Kohli’s intuitive assessments frequently align with the analytical data, which he found reassuring. He shared these thoughts on the For the Love of Cricket podcast with Jos Buttler and Stuart Broad.
“I never worked with him (Kohli) whilst he was captain. My first year at RCB was when we had Faf (du Plessis) as captain. But in terms of his interaction with data, pretty minimal in terms of day-to-day but where he’s absolutely brilliant is where we have team meetings, we have batting meetings and in those meetings, quite often I’ll lead that by sharing information, go through bowler by bowler, what balls have they got, where do they bowl at different phase of the innings and that’s really just a prompter for the discussion between the guys in the room.
“You can see Virat’s cricketing brain kick in those moments and his contributions to those meetings are quite excellent. He’ll pick up stuff sometimes the data doesn’t say, sometimes that it does say. He’s not necessarily asking for lots of data, but what is reassuring is his gut instinct quite often you’ll then go away at the data and that completely matches up.”
RCB analyst sheds light on auction-day pressure and decision-making
Freddie Wilde shared insights into the auction process, noting that although there are high-pressure moments, teams arrive well-prepared and confident in their plans, trusting themselves to execute effectively on the day.
“You feel the eyes of the room on your table, without a doubt. But I think if you have done your prep well and most teams do now and we are particularly thorough at RCB, you go into it, it is probably a bit like preparing for a big game, you feel you have done your training and at that point you are sort of like you are backing yourself to go over and execute to an extent and we had our plan, we have come up with it and then you kind of just go and do it. But there are pressure moments,” he said.
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