New Delhi: Pakistan's legendary fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar has made a sensational claim about former India captain Virat Kohli. It was during the 2010 Asia Cup in Sri Lanka when Shoaib Akhtar and Virat Kohli almost had a face-off. However, in that India-Pakistan match, Shoaib Akhtar did not bowl against Kohli as the Indian batter was dismissed before Akhtar was introduced into the bowling attack. The Pakistani legend has now claimed that if he had bowled to Virat, the star batter would never have scored so many runs against him.
Virat Kohli had recalled his career's early days while talking during YouTube talk show Breakfast With Champions, in the year 2017, saying that he never faced Shoaib Akhtar but he had seen his bowling which was tremendous. Kohli said even at that stage of age, Akhtar looked very dangerous and when the speedster was at his peak, no one wanted to face him.
Reacting to Kohli's statement, Akhtar, in an exclusive conversation with Sportskeeda said, "Virat Kohli is a good person and a big cricketer and you only expect big words from big players. And I thank him a lot for that. But, if I would have played against Virat Kohli then he would not have scored these many runs but whatever he would have scored those would have been fabulous and it would look that he really fought hard for those runs. He may not have had 50 centuries. 20 or 25 may at the most but those would have been valiant hundreds. I would have gotten the best out of Virat Kohli."
Virat Kohli is under the scanner for not scoring runs in international cricket. He, so far, has scored 23650 runs in 458 international games across formats, with 70 centuries and 122 half-centuries. Kohli is currently the seventh-highest run-scorer in world cricket and the third Indian player after Sachin Tendulkar (34357 runs) and Rahul Dravid (24208 runs).