AB de Villiers reveals the four-point advice to Virat Kohli to regain his form

Indian skipper Virat Kohli was going through a lean patch in his career during the four-match Test series against England as he scored just 172 runs in six innings at a poor average of 28.76. This was followed by the skipper walking back to the pavilion for a five-ball duck during the first T20I of the five-match series.

However, in the second T20I, Virat scripted a memorable comeback as he played a match-defining knock of 73* off 49 balls including five boundaries and three maximums. After that, there was no looking back for the batting maestro as he ended up as the highest run-getter in the T20I series with 231 runs from five games at a stunning average of 115.50.

After his scintillating knock in the second T20I, Virat revealed that he had a chat with his dear friend AB de Villiers who advised him to just watch the ball and he did exactly that to regain his lost form. Over a month after that incident, De Villiers elaborated his chat with the India skipper while being interviewed by Danish Sait on ‘Bold Diaries’ on RCB’s YouTube channel.

“Four points. See the ball. Still head. Allow the ball to come into your space. Body language and attitude, and we sort of elaborated around those four points. Those are the kind of little things you forget. It seems so simple, but when you’re struggling to find your rhythm your momentum you really don’t think like ‘keep my head still, let the ball into my space,” disclosed de Villiers.

AB de Villiers reveals the details of his chat with Virat Kohli

Further in the interaction, the former South Africa captain revealed that he wasn’t surprised when Virat Kohli contacted him for advice. AB reckoned that he was watching him play for the past two to three months and the batsman looked quite tensed on the field.  

“We spoke about a couple of things away from the game and then also a couple of technical things. I have been wanting to tell him for quite a while. Because I was watching him for a few months, and he was sort of looking like he was quite tense at the crease with his whole game. So I really wasn’t surprised when I saw the message and I knew immediately, all he needs to hear is the basic stuff,” said de Villiers.