Kohli can't score a century every single time, defends Sunil Gavaskar

It was a rather disappointing end to a very successful campaign for team India in the Champions Trophy 2017. Sunil Gavaskar, the former Indian skipper, believes that the way India lost the game would haunt the players more than the actual defeat. Team India looked in control of the game for very brief while early in the innings when Jasprit Bumrah had managed to get an edge of Fakhar Zaman on 3.

Unluckily, that turned out to be a no ball and things turned sour since then. Zaman went on to score 114 as Pakistan plundered 338 runs on the board. With the ball, Mohammad Amir wreaked havoc to see India cripple down to a mere 158 in their response to hand Pakistan a massive 180 run win. Speaking to NDTV, Sunil Gavaskar noted that the no ball will continue to haunt Jasprit Bumrah for a very long time.

“Jasprit bowled quite superbly throughout the tournament, but yes, I think that no ball is the one that’s going to be, unfortunately for what he is remembered for a long time and mainly because it was against Pakistan,” said Sunil Gavaskar.

On Kohli’s dismissal

The run chase of 338 could have been possible had the chase master Virat Kohli come to the fore. But Kohli had a rare failure on the day when things mattered the most. Kohli edged one to slips as Azhar Ali dropped a sitter. On the very next delivery, he got caught at point. Gavaskar defended Kohli and said that even he is human being and is bound to make errors.

“More than Virat Kohli, the rest of the Indian cricket clubbing population must understand that Kohli is human. That he is going to falter once in a while and so the expectation must scale down just a little bit and not that he is going to go out and score a hundred every single time or he will be winning every single match. I think if those expectations are scaled down then, I think, Virat would be able to perform more consistently than he is doing. He is doing brilliantly and also win more trophies,” said Sunil Gavaskar.