"Virat Kohli left no stone unturned" - Aakash Chopra on RCB star's IPL 2023 performance
Former Indian cricketer Aakash Chopra believes Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) star batter Virat Kohli couldn't have done anything more to try and take his team to the playoffs and beyond.
In 14 games, Kohli scored a staggering 639 runs with six half-centuries and two hundreds that came in back-to-back must-win games. He had to face some criticism for his strike rate in some matches, but Chopra feels Kohli can't be faulted for his performances.
In a video on his YouTube channel, here's what Aakash Chopra had to say about Virat Kohli's IPL 2023 season:
"Virat Kohli scored 8 fifty-plus scores with two centuries in it and had his next best season after 2016. Some people will still criticize him but I feel Kohli did everything he could to help RCB win. He left no stone unturned, but unfortunately, it wasn't enough."
Chopra had a similar opinion about RCB skipper Faf du Plessis, who is still the Orange Cap holder at the time of writing. He said:
"Faf du Plessis had an absolutely stellar season. 730 runs and eight fifties, and the other six scores were also not low scores. He did whatever he could in his capacity to try and help his team win the title. But it just didn't happen."
Aakash Chopra on Indian batters not being consistent for RCB
Aakash Chopra also shed light on how the Royal Challengers Bangalore haven't really been able to get the best out of Indian batters apart from Kohli over the years. He pointed out many reasons such as letting go of Indian stars like KL Rahul and also spoke about how inconsistent the likes of Dinesh Karthik were this season.
On this, Chopra stated:
"Apart from three batters out of which two are overseas, no one else turned up. No Indian batter could make a meaningful contribution consistently.
"Either they have not stuck to Indian talents or the ones they invested it didn't do well. Either way, this has been the problem for them over the years. Virat Kohli has more than 7000 runs for RCB, but the next Indian doesn't even have a thousand."
It will be interesting to see how the Royal Challengers Bangalore shape up their batting for the next season.