South African skipper Faf Du Plessis offered a tip to Australia ahead of their highly-anticipated series against India: to not get into arguments with Indian captain Virat Kohli, instead try ‘silent treatment.’
Du Plessis said that his South Africa adopted a similar approach against Kohli earlier this year when India toured the rainbow nation, in a bid to keep him quiet
He said, “There are guys like that in international cricket (who enjoy the confrontation). We feel like that when we play against someone like Virat Kohli, he wants to get into the fight.”
“He’s an amazing player. We gave him the silent treatment and he still scored runs in South Africa, but we felt like it was not huge runs – he scored the one hundred there in Centurion when the wicket was slow.
Despite South Africa winning that three-match Test series 2-1, Kohli emerged as the highest run-getter which 286 runs averaging impressively at 47.66.
“There’s one or two guys in each team around the world that we as a team discuss before playing against them. We’re like, ‘better not say too much to him because you’ll get him going’,” the Proteas skipper added.
Kohli has been in sublime form all year where he has been amongst the runs in India’s tours of South Africa and England. In case of the latter, Kohli battled his demons of the past as he racked up 593 runs in the five-match Test series.
He continued his hot streak in limited overs’ as well where he scored three back-to-back hundreds against the West Indies, in a series where he also became the fastest to score 10,000 runs in ODI cricket.