IPL 2023: Virat Kohli hits back at Simon Doull over ‘milestone’ jibe

A couple of days back, former New Zealand cricketer Simon Doull had slammed Royal Challengers Bangalore’s star batter Virat Kohli over his slow strike rate. In response to the criticism, the former Indian skipper has hit back at Doull.

During a conversation with Robin Uthappa, Kohli stated that many have not been in a situation like this. The star batter reckoned they look at the game differently.

“There are many people who because they have not been in that situation themselves, they look at the game differently,” said Kohli.

“When the powerplay is over, they will be like ‘oh, they have started rotating the strike’. When you haven’t lost a wicket in the powerplay, usually the best player comes on to bowl, you are trying to figure out what to do against him in the first two overs, so that you can get big ones in the last two overs of that guy and then rest of the innings becomes much easier,” the aggressive batter added.

In the encounter against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), the former RCB skipper reached 42 in 25 balls. Then he took 10 balls to score the next eight runs. That slow approach to reach the half-century by the star batsman did not go down well with Doull, who was giving commentary for the official broadcaster. Doull alleged that Kohli was concerned for his personal milestone.

“Kohli started off like a train. He was going hammer and tongs as he was playing a lot of shots. From 42 to 50, he took 10 balls. Concerned about a milestone. I don’t think there is room for that in this game anymore. Just gotta keep going, especially with wickets in hand at that stage. You got to keep going,” Doull had said.