'Even greats like Tendulkar and Dravid have gone through such a phase' - Sanjay Bangar backs Virat Kohli to bring his 71st ton in SA

The former India cricketer Sanjay Bangar feels that Virat Kohli is just experiencing a lean patch with the willow and that he will turn the tables soon. The batter last hit a century in the pink-ball Test against Bangladesh at Eden Gardens in 2019. Thus, the cricketing fraternity and fans have been raring since then to witness a big knock from the swashbuckling batter.

In the 13 Test matches since his last hundred, Kohli has chipped in 599 runs at an average of 26.04. When asked if the batter will end his century drought in the Test series against South Africa, Bangar backed him to make a larger impact on the team in the upcoming series.

“Please don’t say that time and again because I have said earlier as well that those are 57 innings including all formats. If you just look at the Test innings that he has played, the double hundred that he got against South Africa, it was in Pune I think, after that the run of hundreds has dried up. So it’s been 22 or 23 innings,” Bangar said on Star Sports.

You could see Virat Kohli 3.0: Sanjay Bangar

The former cricketer further reckoned that even the greatest of the cricketers have gone through a rough patch in their careers. And thus it doesn’t mean that they haven’t contributed to the team’s cause. He highlighted Kohli’s recent performances and said that he has very well contributed to the team with his willow.

He further added that Kohli is working hard on his game and that if he follows the process and does not run after the century one can get to witness his batting heroics soon.

“Even greats like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid have gone through such a phase wherein they haven’t scored a hundred for a long time. But it doesn’t really mean that in the interim they haven’t contributed to the team’s cause. If you look at Virat Kohli in the previous series, he got a couple of very good half-centuries, he got a couple of very good forties and that helped the Indian team’s cause.

Yes, he is working towards it. He just has to make sure that the processes that he followed in the dream run that he enjoyed, I just believe that if he is able to calm himself down and not really run after it, not get desperate for it, you could see Virat Kohli 3.0 giving us great happiness and satisfaction as to how he takes the batting to another level altogether,” Bangar said.