Agar: Virat Kohli's masterclass can leave bowlers massively frustrated

Bowlers find it difficult to create pressure on Virat Kohli in ODI cricket, and one main reason for that is his ability to rotate strike at will, Ashton Agar said in a post match show after the batter’s match defining 84 in the first semi final of the Champions ODI Cup in Dubai.

Agar also said Kohli is proficient in managing the pressure from one end by piercing the gaps, making him among the toughest batters to bowl in ODI cricket, and that merged with the other batters’ big shots makes it very challenging for teams to defend totals against the men in blue. Calling his innings as “masterclass”, Agar said bowlers hardly feel like they’re in control when they are bowling to someone of Kohli’s calibre. 

That's the frustrating part about bowling to him," Agar said in the post-match show. "It is not the damage that he can do to the fence, it's just the fact that you cannot build pressure on him. So it's really out to get him out in a sense. You never really feel like you're on top of him unless the ball is really spinning. And you don't get a lot of pitches in one-day cricket like that.

"He has this fantastic ability to hit your best ball, the top of middle stump, slightly spinning away, he holds the bat's face slightly longer than other batters do, opens it in the last second, and hits it in the cover point gap. He's probably the best in the world at doing that and he's very difficult to build pressure on.

"India batted around Virat beautifully. The guys who came in kept pushing the rate and allowed Virat to do his thing, hit the odd boundary and just keep ticking over. I saw a stat that says that Virat has scored the most singles since the year 2000, which is phenomenal. It was a bit of a masterclass from him and all the batters contributed nicely."

Kohli scored 64 of his 84 runs via singles and doubles. Although leg spinners have dismissed him six times since the inception of 2024 for a lowly average of 12, he dominated Adam Zampa and Tanveer Sangha to score 35 in 33 balls against leg spin pair before falling to the latter. Sanjay Manjeraker spotted that Kohli was back to playing shots off the back foot.

“Now you have five fielders inside the circle, so it's not easy as it used to be - like during our times - when you had four fielders," Manjrekar said. "Very rarely has he hit the ball straight to the fielder and hasn't got a run.

"So that one issue against spin that he had where he couldn't rotate strike, hopefully that's out of his system now. Because today was an affirmation that he is back to that very nice footwork, off the back foot playing late, finding gaps all the time. He was the best batter to find gaps from both sides [on Tuesday].

Anil Kumble said he was thoroughly impressed by Kohli’s tendency to make tricky chases look easy. 

“He rarely makes a mistake," Kumble said. "He's totally in control. Especially in run chases. In a chase of around 265, he's in total control except for the one chance to Maxwell. It's not just this innings but every time he bats in a run chase, there's hardly any loss in control. He's always in control of this situation."

Kohli’s latest knock was his third 50-plus score in the Champions Cup semi finals and his fifth in the Knockout games. He is only one half century away from Sachin Tendulkar’s record of six fifty-plus scores in knockout games, while India are one win away from making two titles in a row.