Should Virat open at the T20 World Cup? 2022

At the post-match conference in the Asia Cup, KL Rahul talked about Virat’s opening. When reporter asked about Virat’s opening the innings, He said, “What do you want?” “Should I sit outside?” After KL Rahul said this, I wanted to do research related to T20 as the T20 World Cup is coming. I am not saying KL Rahul’s Intent is bad, but Should Virat open at the T20 World Cup?

How effective is Virat Kohli as an opener?

As an opener, he is a monster. In his international career, he opened nine times and was never out twice. On March 20, 2021, Virat opened against England in Ahmedabad. Rohit Sharma was with him. He did a great job by scoring 80 runs in only 92 balls. As the opener, he got 400 runs in 9 innings, with one hundred and two half-hundreds.

Interestingly As an opener batsman, he has a batting average of 57.14 and a strike rate of 161.29. Surprisingly, this is better than other stats in other places.

How is Virat Kohli at number 3?

Most of his games were played at number three. In one-day matches, nobody came close to Virat when it came to this spot. He is really killing it. He has played 199 games and scored 36 centuries, for a total of 10288 runs and an average score of 60.

Let’s just talk about T20, though. He played in 68 T20 international games and got 2623 runs and 27 half centuries. During this time, he had a 54.65 average and a strike rate of 135. At number 4 or lower, he didn’t play much, and his numbers aren’t good when he’s not at number 3 or lower. The numbers show that he should play no higher than number 3.

Despite playing cricket for 12 years, he only opened nine times. I know this is a very small sample, but it can’t be thrown out. Virat’s 161.29 strike rate shows that as an opener, he plays very quickly, which is what every team wants from their batsman or opener. So what’s going wrong?

I’m not saying that KL Rahul is the problem, but he’s not playing well right now, and his intentions have been called into question more than once. And he’s the only batter who can play anywhere. The question is which spot Virat should bat in.

Should Virat open at the T20 World Cup and KL at number 4?

KL Rahul should hit at number 4. This was proven, and the numbers back it up. He played four times and was not out twice. When he played at number 4, he had one century and 164 runs, an average of 87, and a strike rate of 175. That means that he killed it right in this. According to me, We need to do this.

All the top four players are still all right-handed. Then KL Rahul can come after Virat, Rohit and Suryakumar Yadav. This is the best case for me. I think it’s good for KL to play at number 4. The powerplay can be used by both Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.

But Virat, playing at number 1, can also bite India back. Team India might collapse like a pack of cards. The swing, seam, and bounce of the new ball make it easy for openers to lose their wickets early in T20Is. Some people will say that because Virat is the best batsman on our team, we should expect him to play the swinging balls well. I agree, but Virat is also a person, so I don’t know how long he’ll be able to score 30s and 40s quickly. Who should Open, comment down, Virat Kohli or KL Rahul?

India’s T20 tour will start on September 20 with a match against Australia. After that next match will be against South Africa.