Virat Kohli Needs a Mentor, says Greg Chappell: 'He seems to need a buffer...'

Virat Kohli has struggled to meet expectations in the current Border-Gavaskar Trophy series. Despite showing glimpses of his batting prowess with a century in the second innings at Perth, the Indian captain is feeling the heat as his overall performance in the series has been below par. Kohli has accumulated a total of 126 runs in five innings, with a significant portion of that coming from his century in Perth. The Australian pacers have successfully identified his vulnerability outside the off-stump, leading to his repeated dismissals in a similar fashion. As the pressure mounts, Kohli will need to find a way to overcome this challenging phase and lead his team to success in the remaining matches.

Former Australian captain Greg Chappell analysed Kohli's struggle in recent times and called it Elite Performance Decline Syndrome or EPDS, which he suggested even the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting went through.

“The first visible sign of EPDS is a subtle but unmistakable shift in a player’s approach at the crease. Kohli, once renowned for his domineering starts, has in recent years shown a tendency to begin tentatively. Much like Tendulkar and Ponting before him, Kohli seems to need a buffer – a score of 20 or 30 – before he can rediscover his flow," Chappell wrote in his column for The Sydney Morning Herald.

Chappell advised Kohli to set a target of getting to 20 or 30 first to take the psychological advantage and regain some confidence in the middle.

“Reaching a score of 20 or 30 acts as a psychological turning point, helping them regain the confidence and fluency of their prime," he wrote.

‘Confidence is an emotion…’: Chappell's advice to Kohli

Kohli's first innings average in the 2024-25 season starting from the Bangladesh series is 73 runs in 8 completed innings with an average of 9.125. The sequence of scores are 6, 47, 0, 1, 4, 5, 7 and 3.

Former India coach Chappell asserted that confidence is the key to returning to form.

“The only cure that I know is to rekindle the thinking of your youth. That is easier to say than to do, but it does work. Confidence is an emotion – so if you can recreate that, there is no reason why you can’t reinvent yourself," Chappell suggested.

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