Virat Kohli registered his fifth fifty of IPL 2025 to help Royal Challengers Bengaluru beat Rajasthan Royals on Thursday. With 392 runs under his belt, Kohli is second on the list of players with the most runs in the IPL, only behind Sai Sudarshan of Gujarat Titans. Former Australian captain Aaron Finch noted that Kohli’s ability to score runs consistently ensures stability and provides a platform for RCB to build their innings.

Despite being one of the most consistent performers for RCB in IPL 2024, Kohli’s approach and strike rate became a talking point in an increasingly aggressive T20 landscape last season. However, former legends of the game deemed the scrutiny over his strike rate as ridiculous. Finch concurred with the viewpoint and pointed out how runs on the board were equally crucial for the team.??

“Yes, I mean, if you are offered 650, 700 runs at the start of the year, from one of your top-three batters. No matter whether your strike rate is 150 or 200, you would take that every single day because that just allows your team the platform to play around. That’s when you can put some cowboys in the middle order, ultra-high risk and they tried to do that with Livingstone and it hasn’t quite worked. Last year, Maxwell played that high-risk game as well and Patidar is looking to be overly aggressive as well. So it just allows you a platform, you know, once Virat gets in, very rarely does he get out at 30,” Finch said on ESPN Cricinfo post the match.

Kohli also received praise from Dinesh Karthik and termed his innings as simply ‘outstanding’. “I’m too small a person to even speak about it. He’s an absolute champion. Just the way he went about it. Also guiding Dev along the way, making sure to take Salt along at the start. His body language, his commitment to a cause. Outstanding,” said Dinesh Karthik, who was quoted as saying in a video posted by the franchise on its social media.

Meanwhile, reflecting on his team's performance, Kohli, in a freewheeling chat with broadcasters, said, "Pretty happy, we discussed a few things as a batting unit and applied ourselves well enough to get a total on the board. The dew really helped in the second half, but to claw our way back and get those 2 points was really crucial."

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