Robin Uthappa hails Virat Kohli for preparation and confidence after century in opening ODI against South Africa

Former Indian batter Robin Uthappa has showered praise on Virat Kohli after he scored a match-winning knock in the opening ODI against South Africa at the JSCA International Sports Complex, Ranchi on Sunday. Kohli scored a magnum opus knock of 135 runs off just 120 balls as he batted at the top of his game.

This was the 52nd ODI century for Virat Kohli, helping him go past the legendary Sachin Tendulkar’s tally of 51 hundreds. Uthappa said Kohli looked prepared and confident in his brilliant knock against the Proteas.

The former KKR batter highlighted that in the past, Kohli looked fatigued as if he was trying too hard and said it was palpable in his eyes.

Robin Uthappa said on his YouTube Channel, “He looked prepared in the sense that. It wasn’t like the lack of preparation in the past, but I think his eyes and himself, he just looked fatigued in the past when you felt when he was trying, trying, and trying, and it was the fatigue that was present in his eyes. It almost felt like where there was… it felt like there was something… because there was a period of time when he was trying to score runs and it just wasn’t happening. And, I think that fatigue of just trying and trying to make something work for him began, showing up in his eyes.”

“And, you see, yesterday was real quiet confidence about his own game. You could see there was preparation. You see that he was batting for a while, just the way he tracked the ball. There were certain things that just the way he approached his batting with that… just made you feel so happy to see him in the kind of form that he was in. The amount of time he had to play each ball is what stood out for me. That was the most important part,” he added.

Uthappa highlighted that there were nerves in Kohli’s innings at the start, which showed that he cares to get a big score for the team.

“I think more than that what for me stood out when he came out to bat, you saw that there were nerves and that was actually a good sign for me because you knew that because sometimes when you’ve done so much and you’ve played so long and you’ve tried and then you can get to a place where after you’ve scored 52 hundreds in the version of the game, you go somewhere and then you feel less motivated, right? Or you feel like you are taking things for granted for some time.”

“But you knew that was not going to be the case coming here, but there were nerves, and I like nerves when you start an innings. It just shows that you truly care and you really want to perform, and that for me was special, I thought. I think just the way he approached, the reverence with which he approached his batting in those first 10 balls was for me was really cool,” he added.

The second ODI between India and South Africa will be played at the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium, Raipur on Wednesday.