The Indian batting great talked about his slowest and the fastest running partner during a YouTube conversation with AB de Villiers.
Virat Kohli amusingly picked out the worst runner he has batted with over the past decade and a half at the international stage. The Indian batting great opened up the lid on someone he believes is the worst between the wickets, unable to match up to his abilities to get across two ends and maximise each delivery.
Speaking to his Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) teammate and great friend AB de Villiers on his YouTube special ‘The 360 show’, Kohli said that runner is another of his longstanding teammate and great friend Cheteshwar Pujara.
While sympathetic of Pujara having undergone two career-threatening knee surgeries, the former India captain couldn’t help but laugh on the team’s Test match No.3 for his slow running and inability to sprint for him between two ends.
Virat Kohli even spoke of an incident that highlighted this aspect of Pujara. Along the same breathe, he also named his legendary India skipper MS Dhoni as the best runner between the wickets he has played with. Having previously, too, lauded Dhoni for his running, Kohli only reiterated this aspect of the great wicketkeeper-batter’s game during his heyday.
In all his humour, the great batter called it a “controversial one”, before stating: “Cheteshwar Pujara!!”, Kohli responded to the De Villiers query and recalled the second Test of the trip to South Africa five years back. “It was a Centurion Test match on the tour of 2018. He was run out in both the innings.”
“Pujara was run-out in the first innings of Centurion Test and I said, ‘Its OK’, such things happen in cricket; Cheteshwar Pujara played a shot in the second innings and called Parthiv Patel for 3rd run, Pujara himself was running towards the danger end and he got run-out again and that too by a big margin.”
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Kohli said the fastest runner between the wickets that he has batted with is De Villiers himself. But since the question was posed to him in a way that he couldn’t name his friend, the next best option was always going to be Dhoni, with whom he shared some really fruitful partnerships across formats.
“Of course, it’s not even a question. I’ve been asked this question before. AB has been by far the fastest I’ve run with between wickets. The only other guy who I had so much coordination and understanding with was MS (Dhoni),” Kohli said.
“Now, I don’t know the speeds matching between the wickets. But him (AB) and MS, I would not even have to call. We hardly called.”
