South Africa captain Faf du Plessis on Friday revealed that his team gave India captain Virat Kohli the ‘silent treatment’ in an attempt to keep him quiet when the two teams squared off earlier this year.
Du Plessis’ South Africa beat India 2-1 in the Test series but Kohli emerged as the top run-getter in the series with an aggregate of 286 from three Tests at an average of 47.66.
With the India-Australia series only weeks away, on-field confrontations between the two rivals have been one of the central themes. Du Plessis thinks that Kohli loves an on-field verbal duel. “There are guys like that in international cricket (who enjoy the confrontation),” he said. “We feel like that when we play against someone like Virat Kohli. He’s a similar character (to du Plessis), he wants to get into the fight.
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“There’s one or two guys in each team around the world that we as a team discuss before playing against them. We’re like, ‘better not say too much to him because you’ll get him going’.”
Kohli has been in imperious form throughout the year. The world no 1 Test batsman slammed 593 runs against England in the five-match series and followed that up with three back-to-back hundreds against Windies in the One-day International series.
As for the South Africa series, Du Plessis felt that his team did well against Kohli. “He’s an amazing player. We gave him the silent treatment and he still scored runs in South Africa, but we felt like it was not huge runs – he scored the one hundred there in Centurion when the wicket was slow.”
“So every team will have what they think works – for us, that was silent treatment.”