After playing a crucial knock for India in the T20 World Cup final against South Africa in June, Virat Kohli returned to the international stage with the one-day series against Sri Lanka. But in the 3 matches, the batter failed to fire and as a result India suffered shocking defeats in the second and third ODI by 32 and 110 runs, respectively and went on to lose their first bilateral series against Sri Lanka in 27 years.
Kohli scored 24 runs in the first match and then scored 14 and 20 runs in the next two matches bringing his total for the series to only 58 runs. There were high expectations from Kohli in the ODI, but he completely failed to deliver and was trapped in front of the wickets in all three matches.
Due to his disappointing performances against Sri Lanka, Kohli received a lot of criticism by fans on social media. However, now his former Royal Challengers Bangalore teammate, Dinesh Karthik has come up to defend him by saying that it was tough to bat in the Sri Lankan conditions.
“It’s been a tough pitch to play spin in this series, let’s admit that first. Be it Virat Kohli, be it Rohit Sharma, or be it anyone else. With the slightly semi-new ball between overs about 8 to 30, it’s been hard work. It’s nothing to worry about. Not too many pitches work that way, but it’s been a tough pitch to play spinners. I’m not going to defend Virat Kohli here, but I can tell you that playing spin was very hard,” Karthik said on a Cricbuzz show.
Kohli had a chance to break Sachin Tendulkar’s record and become the fastest batter in the world to score 14,000 runs in ODIs during the series, however he failed to achieve this objective and will now have to wait till January 2025 to cross the mark.
