The much-awaited Indian Premier League is a little away now as the 17th edition of the tournament kicks off on March 22. Defending champions Chennai Super Kings will be hosting Royal Challengers Bangalore at their den of Chepauk. Meanwhile, former CSK and Mumbai Indians star Harbhajan Singh has opened on Virat Kohli's performance at the venue.
Speaking to Star Sports ahead of the new season of the tournament, Harbhajan stressed on the difficulty of playing in Chennai and opened up on Virat Kohli's performance too. "The greatness of Virat has been reduced in terms of his overall performance at that venue. It is a tricky venue to bat, especially as an opening batsman against a sort of weird tennis ball-type bounce.
"They've (CSK) got the great (Ravindra) Jadeja bowling stump to stump. He'll get the oddball to turn and then the oddball to stay low. It's really tricky," he said as quoted by PTI.
Kohli has scored 7263 runs in 237 matches at an average of 37.25 and a strike rate of 130. However, his performances at the Chennai venue see a dip. He averages 30 and strikes at 111 at this venue.
"If he's actually prepared to bat about 20 overs, then he can put together a match-winning performance because two hundred at the accessible Chinnaswamy do not necessarily guarantee the same at Chepauk," he said.
Harbhajan said that Kohli needs to display the beast mode of 2016. "It's important for him to have a season like 2016 because if Virat goes on to score runs, the team will go forward.
I don't know if they will go on to win the cup or not.
"But with the brilliant individuals they have in their team—Virat, (Glenn) Maxwell, (Cameron) Green, and a few more like Patidar— I believe they have a lot of good batting and everyone wants Virat to have a repeat of 2016,” he added.
