Cape Town. Team India’s batting coach Vikram Rathor on Tuesday praised Virat Kohli’s innings in the first innings of the third Test against South Africa. He also said that the captain’s batting was never a matter of concern for him. Electing to bat after winning the toss, Team India was all out for 223 runs in the first innings. During this, Virat, who did not play in the last Test due to back pain, played a restrained innings of 79 runs. India lost both their openers early in the morning session. After this Kohli landed. After playing 15 balls, he opened the account with a brilliant cover drive.
Rathor said in a press conference after the end of the day’s play, ‘The way Kohli was batting, there was never any concern. I mean he was always batting well. I felt as a batting coach I was never worried that he was not batting well. He is looking very good in the nets. He was looking very good in the match as well. They were getting started.
Rathore further said, ‘Today there was a good change in Kohli’s batting. He was more disciplined. I agree with him. So he looked really good. With a little luck, he could have played a big innings, but I am happy with the way he played.
However, Rathour was not happy with the performance of the other batsmen. He said the batsmen could have done better. These are challenging situations. There are no easy conditions to score runs. We could have scored 50-60 more runs which we were hoping for. Virat played a great innings… Pujara was looking really good but the African team bowled well in the morning. The conditions were challenging to bat in, but there were some soft dismissals in the later innings. We definitely could have done better. Rathore also expressed hope that the visitors will restrict the hosts to low scores on the second day of the ongoing Test.
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