Kohli's effort against Australia in the semi-final match included 56 singles and four twos, indicating his exemplary fitness level
Batting stalwart Virat Kohli can be a bowler's nightmare when on song and his repertoire of strokes make it nearly impossible to "build pressure on him", said Australian spinner Ashton Agar following another masterclass from the Indian ace in the Champions Trophy semifinal. (Highlights | Talking Points | Full Coverage)
Kohli added to his match-winning unbeaten century against Pakistan in the group stage by slamming a fluent 84 against Australia in Dubai to guide India into the final of the marquee tournament.
"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 hard 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," left-arm spinner Agar, who has taken 79 wickets across formats for Australia, said on ESPNcricinfo's Match Day.
Kohli's ability to find the gaps and squeezing ones and twos with ease too drew praise from the Australian cricketer, who said that for a bowler it's really "frustrating".
"That's the frustrating part about bowling to him. 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."
Agar added that Kohli was the fulcrum around which the Indian team built the innings to overcome Australia.
"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 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's effort included 56 singles and four twos, indicating his exemplary fitness level.
Former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar added, the fact that Kohli is able to find the gaps despite five fielders inside the circle is a testament to his mastery over batting.
"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. Very rarely has he hit the ball straight to the fielder and hasn't got a run," said Manjrekar.
"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)."