India batting coach Vikram Rathour on Tuesday (January 11) said that he was impressed with Test skipper Virat Kohli's discipline on Day 1 of the ongoing third Test against South Africa at Newlands, Cape Town.
Kohli played a patient and well-crafted 79 but South Africa gained the upper hand by bowling out the visitors for a below par score of 223 on Day 1 of the series-decider.
“There was never concern with the way he (Kohli) was batting, I mean he was always batting well, I thought as a batting coach, I was never concerned that he is not batting well, he was looking very good in the nets, he was looking very good in the game also, he was getting starts,” Rathour said in the virtual press conference after the day's play.
“One good change today, he was more disciplined, I agree with that, so he really looked good, really good solid and with a bit of (more) luck, he could have converted into a big one, but I am happy (with) the way he played,” elaborated Rathour.
On the overall batting performance, Rathour did not sound too pleased as he said, “These are challenging conditions, not easy conditions to score runs in, but you are right, we are below par. We could have scored 50/60 more runs, that’s what we were at-least expecting,”.
“Virat played a phenomenal innings... Pujara was looking really good, but then they bowled a good spell in the morning, the conditions were overcast and they were challenging (for batting), but again I thought there were some soft dismissals in the later part of the innings, we could have done better definitely,” he added.
According to the batting coach, there were soft dismissals in the latter part of the innings and the batters could have done a better job.
South Africa are 17/1 at stumps. Indian pacers are expected to pick early wickets on Day 2 to restrict the Proteas. India eye an historic series win as the series is levelled 1-1. India have never won a Test series in South Africa.
