He’s earned the right to never be written off: Ben Stokes on Virat Kohli

The battle of words is usual ahead of any big encounters and when it’s a T20 World Cup semi-final expect it to be a full-blown war. However, coming to the grand semi-final slated to be played at Adelaide between India and England, English all-rounder, Ben Stokes had a few words of praise for the former Indian captain Virat Kohli.

Virat Kohli has been in exemplary form throughout the tournament, currently leading the run-scoring charts with 246 runs and is also going to be a vital cog in the Indian plans as they battle the reckoning English forces at Adelaide.

Talking about Virat’s earlier lean patch in the year, English all-rounder Ben Stokes said, “Virat could have four unbelievable years like he had and then have a not-so-loud couple of months and then for some reason, players like that will get written off. I’ve got no idea why. I think he’s earned the right to never be written off.”

The English all-rounder further added, “You don’t produce the numbers and the innings he does over all three formats... as players and people who play against him a lot, you never take anything he’s done in the game before into the game he’s got here.”

In a must-win encounter against Sri Lanka, Ben Stokes carved an important 42 to steer England across the finish line. Talking about his heroics in the final group stage encounter, Stokes said, “I just knew what I had to do. I assessed pretty early that I was going to try my hardest to be there at the end. The situation itself wasn’t too much of an ask, it was basically just a run a ball from the whole time I went in, but the wicket was slowing up and getting a bit worse as we spent more time on it, so I just assessed that I’ll stay in there and be there at the end.”

He concluded by talking about the upcoming contest between India and England, stating, “This is the crunch time in the tournament, Thursday’s all about which team turns up and can perform at their best. We come here to Adelaide, which is a very different dimension to the other grounds we’ve played on. We’ve been playing on big square boundaries and looking to try to get the batters to hit them, whereas obviously, here we’re probably going to look to change our tactics around that.”