Former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar wants Virat Kohli to give Sachin Tendulkar a call on New Year eve, wish him a happy new year and ask him how he managed to score a double hundred at Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) in 2003-04 without playing a single cover drive.
Tendulkar was also struggling with his drives on the Australia tour of 2003-04 and was not able to score a lot of runs. So, going into the last test match of the tour, the master blaster decided that he would score all his runs without driving a single ball through the cover region, and he successfully ended up doing it, on his way to a double hundred.
Virat Kohli, who has probably been one of the best players of cover drive ever, has been getting out quite a lot of trying to play that shot in recent times. More than the shot itself, the line of the deliveries, that Kohli is going after, is creating issues for him.
In both the innings of the recently finished Centurion test match, Kohli was dismissed attempting a drive through the off side and on both occasions, the ball was so far wide that he could have easily left it for the keeper. Kohli still tried to manufacture a shot out of it and ended up edging it behind the stumps both times.
Sunil Gavaskar wants Virat Kohli to play the kind of knock Sachin Tendulkar played at SCG
According to Gavaskar, if one particular shot is causing Kohli’s dismissals at the moment, he should try putting that shot aside for a while and start playing it again once he gets back to rhythm, just like what Sachin Tendulkar did in Sydney many years ago.
Sunil Gavaskar was speaking on Star Sports at the end of the Centurion test match and he said if Kohli wants, he can talk to Tendulkar himself about how to approach his innings in a way where he completely shuts down the drive through the cover and the extra cover region.
"It would be fantastic if Virat Kohli calls Sachin Tendulkar up to wish him a Happy New year and during the talk, Maybe just check up with him on how he curbed his off side shots in the year 2003-04 against Australia." – Sunil Gavaskar (On Star Sports)
— CricketMAN2 (@man4_cricket) December 31, 2021
