Virat Kohli's power game is back, reckons Sanjay Manjrekar

New Delhi, Sep 27: Former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar is mighty pleased to see star India batter Virat Kohli getting his mojo back and reckons the growth in confidence of the batting maestro has also brought his power game back.

Speaking exclusively on SPORTS18's daily sports news show 'SPORTS OVER THE TOP', Manjrekar analysed the way Kohli has been scoring runs since the Asia Cup 2022 and said, "See, right from the Asia Cup every match that he got runs, not just the runs, there was some improvement coming. I think the power game is back, he's trusting his power game. There was a time when he was getting runs but his power game was not coming at his beck and call, that is starting to happen. He's dispatching good balls for big boundaries and sixes.

"It's all about confidence, this is a guy who's damn self-confident and drives himself to excellence but for long-time runs weren't coming and his confidence was tender. But during the Asia Cup, slowly and steadily, certain things start to happen, the pull shots came in, and the sixes started going more into the stands than just going over the rope as it was going in the IPL. So, the pieces falling back to frame the perfect picture. Now it's all about putting all these kinds of performances in the main event," he added further.

Manjrekar also shared his opinion on what went wrong for pacers Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Harshal Patel in the India-Australia series. Both the bowlers went for runs in the three-match bilateral series which became a matter of concern for the team management, going into the T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia.

"With Bhuvneshwar Kumar, it's never a very simple answer but you've got to give one of the simple answers and one of the main reasons why Bhuvi seems to be off the boil - is playing too much cricket. In the sense, that he's played all the matches coming into this series as well. The Bhuvneshwar Kumar I have seen over the years, he's not one of the strongest guys going around, he's not somebody who takes a lot of workload, he plays one format and hardly any other. He's somebody if you notice, barring injury, if he comes later a break to play in any tournament, he's at his best in the first few games. So, I'm going to put down Bhuvneshwar Kumar's current performance to just match fatigue. Harshal Patel has limitations as a seam bowler, but India must look as one of the third seaming options and must look at a couple of others as options and I keep stressing on Mohammed Shami as the other option," he added further.