London: Former England captain Michael Vaughan feels that Virat Kohli, who is going through a lean patch, needs a three-month sabbatical and advised the batter to “go and sit on a beach”.
The 33-year old Kohli has gone more than 100 innings in all forms of cricket including IPL without scoring a hundred since hitting 136 in Kolkata against Bangladesh in November 2019. The star batter has often got starts, even gone past fifty several times since that innings in Kolkata but hasn’t managed to hit his 71st international century yet.
The two innings of 11 and 20 in the rescheduled fifth Test against England have extended Kohli’s lean run with the bat. The star batter looked in good touch during his stay in the middle, but he failed to convert his starts into big innings.
“I look at Virat in particular. I knew he had a little bit of a rest at the end of the IPL. But he just looks to me like he needs a sabbatical. He looks like he needs three months away from cricket. Go and sit on a beach,” Vaughan told Cricbuzz.
“Go and do what you can with your family because of a career of 20 years, which he probably will end up getting because he’s such a good player. To have a three months break, is it going to affect him? No. Will it help him? Yes,” he added.
Vaughan also questioned the scheduling of the India-England series, saying it’s impossible for the players to play all three formats in a span of a few days.
“I just looked at the schedule for India and England. It’s ridiculous. We’ll see more and more of this over the next few years. It’s just impossible that all-format players will be able to play all three formats,” he said.
“The management of all these teams are going to have to be very clever in terms of giving them a breather,” he added.
