Lara had an elegant strokeplay.
Legendary West Indies batter Brian Lara has mirrored his batting technique with Virat Kohli, another giant and one of the finest Indian Test batters. Lara had an elegant strokeplay, and his ball-hitting ability against pace and spin was second to none.
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While chatting on the Stick to Cricket Podcast, former England captain Michael Vaughan asked Lara whether he would play funky shots like reverse sweeps if he were to play today. The Caribbean batter replied that he didn’t feel the need for such strokes, giving the example of Kohli, who never plays such shots either.
“At the end of the day, I think I had enough shots to survive. And I look at guys like Virat Kohli, they don’t do much of that (reverse sweeps). So I think I would have been one of the players who would have, instead of playing a reverse sweep down to third man, would have hit them over extra cover.”
Despite not playing unconventional shots, Lara maintained a high strike rate of 60.51 in the longest format. Among all the batters with at least 9000 Test runs, he had the best strike rate, despite maintaining an average of 52.88 and scoring big centuries, double centuries, and even a 400 in his Test career.
While the great Brian Lara has been kind enough to compare himself with Virat Kohli, he was better than the Indian batter in terms of range and strokeplay. His high backlift and nimble footwork enabled him to access off-side easily against pacers, while his wrists were magical enough to pierce any gap.
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Even against spinners, Lara had the ability to get to the pitch of the ball and smother spin with his long reach, a feature that helped him immensely on spin-friendly decks. He was equally potent while hitting down the ground, a reason why he averaged a whopping 58.84, including four fifties and five centuries across 26 innings, in Asian Tests.
Meanwhile, Virat Kohli’s limited range and chinks were well-documented, which exacerbated in the last few years and his average dropped massively. During his peak, he played some of the great knocks in Test cricket by overcoming those loopholes in his batting technique, which is a testament to his competitive nature and sheer willpower.
However, Lara was technically superior and didn’t have many glaring issues in his batting technique, unlike Kohli, whose weakness against deliveries outside off-stump and spin game was heavily exploited by bowlers in the later part of his career. Both were great batters and did exceptionally well in their careers, but technique-wise, Lara is miles ahead of Kohli, and the numbers confirm it.
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