Difficult for others to score at Virat's strike rate: Pujara
26 Nov 2017 4:55 PM GMT
Nagpur: Indian captain Virat Kohli not only piles on Test hundreds but also scores them at a brisk pace making it difficult for most of his peers to match, concedes Cheteshwar Pujara, who himself is an epitome of consistency.
Four Indian batsmen has scored four hundreds in the second Test against Sri Lanka here but it was no-brainer that Kohli stood head and shoulders above the rest.
Opener Murali Vijay's 128 off 221 balls was made a strike rate of 57.91. Pujara's 14th Test hundred -- 143 off 362 balls -- had a strike rate of less than 40 (39.50). Rohit Sharma's 102 off 160 balls was scored at a rate 63.75 while Kohli's 213 off 267 balls came at an impressive rate of 79.77.
Asked why other players could not score at Kohli's pace, Pujara admitted that matching his captain can be extremely difficult. "See, he (Kohli) is a kind of player who performs well in all the formats of the game and the way he started off, if there was some other batsmen, I don't think they could have started in the same way. I think it's his confidence and way he is batting, in last two to three years, it would have been difficult for any other batsman to score at such a strike rate," Pujara said in a glowing tribute to his captain's capabilities.
Pujara said that it was a "difficult pitch" not from batting perspective but certainly when it came to scoring runs.
"Kolkata was different wicket altogether with a lot of assistance for fast bowlers especially in the first innings. Coming to this particular wicket, I think, it was difficult to score runs as this wicket was on the slower side. It was not easy to get boundaries and we had to rotate the strike," he said.
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