From Australia to Netherlands, Team India defeated the remaining 9 teams participating in the World Cup 2023 one by one in the last 36 days. Now it is the turn of the semi-finals, in which Team India will face New Zealand. In this match, maximum attention will be kept on Team India’s batting. There will be special expectations from Virat Kohli, who is the batsman who has scored the most runs for Team India in the entire tournament so far. However, if history tells us anything, it is that Kohli cannot be trusted.
Under the captaincy of Rohit Sharma, the Indian team has done well in all departments almost all the time in the league stage matches. Sometimes even if there was a deficiency on one front, it was compensated from the other. The result is that Team India performed strongly against every team and entered the semi-finals with a 100% win record. The batting order is in full swing, with captain Rohit Sharma and former captain Virat Kohli at the forefront. Now if we want success in the semi-finals then it is very important for at least these two to perform there also.
Untrustable record in knockout matches
This semi-final will prove to be a big test especially for Virat Kohli because his record in the knockout matches of the World Cup is not trustworthy. For the first time, Kohli participated in the 2011 World Cup, where he scored 68 runs in 3 innings including quarter-final, semi-final and final. This is not a very good record but the innings of 35 runs played by Kohli in his very first final increases the importance of this performance.
Since then, however, Kohli’s performance has been very poor and he has been able to score only 5 runs in the next 3 knockout matches. He could score only 3 runs against Bangladesh in the quarter-finals of the World Cup 2015, 1 run against Australia in the semi-finals and then only 1 run against New Zealand in the semi-finals of the 2019 World Cup. In this way, Kohli has scored only 73 runs in 6 knockout innings of the World Cup.
Don’t cheat this time in the semi-finals!
Now if we talk only about the semi-final matches, then the record of the star Indian batsman is even worse. He has scored only 11 runs in 3 semi-final matches. Not only is single digit scores a troubling pattern in the semi-finals, but in all three semi-finals Kohli was troubled by left-arm fast bowlers and sent back to the pavilion. Pakistan’s Wahab Riaz in the 2011 semi-final, then Australia’s pacer Mitchell Johnson in the World Cup 2015 and finally New Zealand’s Trent Boult in the 2019 World Cup semi-final defeated Kohli. Once again Trent Boult will be in front in the semi-finals and in such a situation Kohli has a chance to settle the old score.
