India vs South Africa: Virat Kohli doesn't need a lot of practice at this stage of his career, says Vikram Rathour

India batting coach Vikram Rathour dismissed suggestions Virat Kohli needed more practice heading into the first Test against South Africa, which got underway in Centurion on Tuesday.

Kohli, who patiently fought his way to 38 before falling prey to an outstanding delivery from Kagiso Rabada (5/44) on Day 1, hit the nets just once before the first Test — on Christmas Eve. The Indian batting icon had skipped the three-day intra-squad practice game at Pretoria’s Tuks Oval and had earlier sought permission to travel to the United Kingdom for personal reasons.

Former India batter Rathour, however, felt that Kohli did not need much practice at this stage of his career, especially after the kind of career that he has had so far.

“The stage of his career Virat (Kohli) is, I don’t think he needs a lot of practice,” Rathour said after the end of opening day’s play of the first Test against South Africa at SuperSport Park on Tuesday.

“He bats a lot and trains a lot. So, if he practiced a few days less, doesn’t matter much. We saw, how well he was playing. It didn’t seem he was away from red-ball cricket for six months. It’s a good sign,” the former India opener said.

Kohli had been dropped on 4 by Tony de Zorzi off Nandre Burger’s bowling early the innings, at a time when the visitors were off to a disastrous start by losing their top three batters with just 24 runs on the board.

Kohli would go on to add another 34 runs and stitch a 68-run stand for the fourth wicket with Shreyas Iyer, who too was dropped on 4, before nicking a full delivery from Rabada that nipped away slightly after pitching along off, enough to tickle the outside edge and land in Kyle Verreyne’s wicket-keeping gloves.

The visitors, who are aiming to conquer the ‘Final Frontier’ — beat South Africa in a Test series in South Africa for the first time ever — reached 208/8 before heavy rain and poor light forced the day to come to a premature end.

And a key reason why they were able to cross 200 with two wickets in hand despite suffering another batting collapse was mainly due to wicketkeeper-batter KL Rahul’s gritty 70 not out in 105 deliveries.

When asked about his fighting knock on a tough Centurion wicket, Rathour was all praise for the 31-year-old and described him as India’s “man of crisis”.

“Rahul is turning out to be man of crisis for us. Every time, there are tough situations, he is the guy who handles it well for us. Nothing special, he was clear with his game plans, defended the right balls, attacked the right ones,” Rathour added.

As for the SuperSport Park wicket, which appears far from easy to bat on judging by the events of Day 1, the Jalandhar native felt it was “always going to be challenging” a place for batters, especially taking weather into account.

“It was always going to be challenging. The weather was an issue. The wicket was under cover for a day or more than that. It was always going to be challenging as batting group. We would have loved to have couple of more wickets in hand. But we have done reasonably well,” he defended.

“Post lunch, Rabada bowled an exceptional spell. We have to try and add as many runs as possible but as we have seen historically, this wicket deteriorates,” he reasoned.

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Rathour also acknowledged the Proteas’ use of a tactic that had worked in their favour the last time the Indians toured the ‘Rainbow Nation’ in 2021-22, during which the Kohli-led visitors ended up losing the three-match series despite winning the opening game in Centurion.

“Not very often but in last series also there were 5-6 dismissals down leg side. At lunch, they bowled 65 balls down leg, if they bowled outside off, whether they would have got same success, that’s debatable,” Rathour said.

“Because of tennis ball like spongy bounce, it was a difficult delivery to control as you saw how (Shubman) Gill got out. I feel they used it as a tactic,” he added.