Cricket star Virat Kohli was “completely blown away” by Suryakumar Yadav’s innings.
Cricket star Virat Kohli was “completely blown away” by Suryakumar Yadav’s innings. Suryakumar Yadav’s innings against Hong Kong on Wednesday “blew away” Virat Kohli away. He said that Yadav “changed the momentum of the game on a pitch that wasn’t as easy as he made it look.”
Kohli and Suryakumar both got 50s during an unbroken 98-run partnership for the third wicket that took 42 balls. When Suryakumar came in with seven overs left, India was able to speed up and finish with a score of 192 for 2 in Dubai.
Kohli on SKY’s Performance
“SKY played an outstanding knock, a knock that I enjoyed thoroughly from the other end,” Kohli said during a conversation with Suryakumar for BCCI.tv. “I’ve seen so many innings when we play in the IPL [against each other], or that being done to other teams, but this was my first experience of watching very closely. I was completely blown away. I honestly believe that the way you played today, if you can stay in that zone, you can literally change the complexion of the game against any team in the world.”
India’s turn was like a story with two parts. In the first, KL Rahul only got 36 runs off of 39 balls, which was his slowest T20I innings where he faced at least 30 balls. On the other hand, Kohli was not as rusty, but he still had to work hard for his runs.
SKY and Kohli’s Runs
When Suryakumar joined Kohli in the middle, he hit his first two balls to the deep square-leg boundary. Kohli was on 33 at the time. In the first ten balls he faced, he hit four fours and a six. This set the tone for a 360-degree batting master class.
“When I was sitting inside, me and Rishabh [Pant] were speaking about how we could take game this ahead as the wicket was a little slow,” Suryakumar said. “When I went into bat, I tried to just be myself and do what I love doing. It was a really simple plan: taking the first 10 balls, I wanted to hit three-four boundaries and when I got that, I just kept batting.”
Suryakumar played scoops, sweeps, and flicks, and he also hit two amazing sixes over point. He did all of this in just 22 balls, which is the fastest time for a T20 international player to reach 50. He hit four sixes in the last over and went unbeaten with 68 runs off 26 balls, while Kohli went unbeaten with 59 runs off 44 balls. In the last five overs, India got 78 runs.
“At that moment, I knew I needed you there,” Suryakumar said to Kohli. “That’s why I told you that you just bat from one end, it’ll be easy to cover up because I’ve seen you a lot of times, when you take 30-35 balls, the next 10 balls you bat with a strike rate of 200-250. It was important for me that you stay there so that I bat freely until the 20th over. And the same thing happened. I really enjoyed it.”
Kohli feels mentally fresh
After being away for 42 days, Kohli said again how “mentally fresh” he felt right now. He had scored 35 runs in 34 balls when he came back against Pakistan. His 50-run innings against Hong Kong wasn’t the smoothest, but Kohli was able to speed up at the end.
“My plan was simple, like in the last game,” Kohli said. “I’ve come off a decent break, month and a half. Six weeks is a long time, especially at the international level when you get out of touch with the game, but I came mentally fresh. So I really enjoyed myself in the last game as well, against a quality attack. I kind of got the pace of the wicket, but I knew my job was to stabilize the innings and build a partnership with whoever I play with. And in between when the situation allows me to, take a risk and find a boundary every now and then.”
“But again, when you [Suryakumar] came in, I told you I’m going to keep going but the moment you started and gave me a clear indication of how you’re feeling, my role immediately changed to holding one end. As you said, you could go out and express yourself almost every ball. That is something I enjoy doing, so that even if god forbid you didn’t get those runs, then I could take charge, or we have Rishabh [Pant] or in another game Hardik [Pandya], Dinesh [Karthik] or [Ravindra Jadeja] Jaddu.”
“It was just applying whatever knowledge I have accumulated over the years for the benefit of the team. It was nice to get a couple of games where I felt good with my batting. For me, milestones and number of runs are irrelevant, it’s how you feel when you bat, and I felt very good.”
India is the first team from Group A to move on to the Super 4 stage of the Asia Cup. They did this by winning both of their games.