How Gary Kirsten helped Virat Kohli raise his game to next level

The world cup winning coach Gary Kirsten in his latest interview revealed his relationship with the batting maestro Virat Kohli and how he helped Virat Kohli in becoming the better version of himself.

Gary Kirsten discusses about early days of Virat Kohli

The current Indian captain was still trying to find his feet at the international arena when Gary Kirsten took over as the head coach of the Indian national team. When speaking about Virat Kohli, Gary Kirsten said

Our relationship was formulated around him as a young player coming in, and me trying to say to him that he has a long way to go and to build in some consistent behaviors into the way he played this game.

It is a very well known fact that Virat Kohli is a sincere student of the game and his hunger to learn and succeed is what makes him unparalleled in the cricketing world.

“When I met Virat first up, he had great abilities and talent and he was a young guy. But I kind of knew straight away that he wasn’t operating in the best version of himself. So we had a number of discussions,” Kirsten further added

How Kirsten’s advice helped Virat to muster a century!

Virat Kohli has one of the great conversion rates in the history of Indian cricket but during his initial days, the player struggled to pace his innings. Here’s what Kirsten had to say about his advice to Virat Kohli

I’ll never forget one when we were playing an ODI series against Sri Lanka, and he was batting beautifully and he was on 30-odd not out. He then decided that he would try and hit the (bowler) over long-on’s head for six. And he got holed out.

The southpaw is one of the successful Indian coaches to date and his partnership with MS Dhoni did wonders for India. During his rein, India won the historic world cup and also reached the #1 ranking in test cricket

“I just said to him, ‘If you’re going to take your cricket to the next level, you need to hit that ball down the ground for one. You know you can hit a lot of balls up the ground, but there’s a lot of risk attached to that.’ I think he took that on board, he got a hundred in the next one-day in Kolkata”, Kirsten concluded,” Kirsten concluded.