It has been more than two years since Virat Kohli scored a century in any form of the game and the wait was stretched further on Sunday as he got out on 35 on the first day of the Centurion Test.

Indian captain looked good in his stay for almost two hours until he chased a very wide delivery off the bowling of Lungi Ngidi. Former Indian pacer Ashish Nehra opined that there is a specific pattern forming in Virat Kohli’s dismissals as he failed to convert his starts into a 3-figure mark on multiple occasions of late.

World Test Championship, India — Virat Kohli[photo: Twitter]

“You expect runs from someone like Kohli. He would be unhappy with his performance. But if you look at the stats, Kohli has scored runs in the previous away series in England conditions. He has the hunger to score hundreds and double hundreds and he would be a bit unhappy with himself today,” Ashish Nehra spoke to Cricbuzz.

Nehra also spoke about the lack of patience shown by the skipper. He gave an example of KL Rahul who showed the amazing application to leave the deliveries outside off stump. The Karnataka batter scored his 7th Test hundred which put India in a commanding position after the first day’s play.

“Looking at the way he’s been dismissed, it’s a bit of concern. South African bowlers made Kohli play a loose shot and this has been a problem lately.

“Kohli has been giving his wickets to bowlers. Looking at today’s dismissal, we understand how Kohli has been out facing swinging deliveries aimed around the fourth stump. In such cases, you need the batter to leave those deliveries; we saw that from KL Rahul today,” he said.

Virat Kohli. Photo Credit: Getty Images.

Nehra also pointed out a technical change in his batting. He said that Kohli isn’t playing on the front foot against the express pace as he used to at his prime. However, the former pacer is quite confident that he would turn in around sooner rather than later.

“You expect Kohli to play those 135-150 kmph deliveries on the front foot but when the ball starts moving and bounces too, any player would face difficulties. We haven’t seen the Kohli whom we saw 2-3 years back.

“But once he gets out of this zone, he will be unstoppable. But Kohli’s mentality and understanding of the game will help him score that much-awaited knock. He had scored 74 in the Adelaide Test against Australia this year and another such knock isn’t far away,” he opined.

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