Agar also said Kohli’s ability to manage the pressure from one end by finding the gaps makes him among the most difficult batters to bowl to in ODI cricket, and that combined with the other batters’ big shots makes it very difficult for teams to defend totals against India. Terming his innings as a “masterclass”, Agar said bowlers rarely feel like they’re on top of a batter of Kohli’s quality.
“That’s the frustrating part about bowling to him,” Agar said in the post-match show on ESPNcricinfo. “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 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.”
“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].
“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.”
