“I don’t think he is going to….” - AB de Villiers gives a piece of advice to Virat Kohli ahead of IPL 2025

Former South African captain and batting great AB de Villiers has opened up on Virat Kohli’s approach in the upcoming IPL 2025 season. De Villiers has asserted that Kohli doesn’t need to up his strike rate as he is set to partner with Phil Salt, who is one of the explosive opening batters in the shortest format of the game.

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Notably, RCB has some explosive firepower in this IPL 2025 season, namely Phil Salt, Tim David, Liam Livingstone, and Romario Shepherd. With a lot of dashing batters in and around, there would be less pressure on Virat Kohli, according to AB de Villiers.

"Virat seems to be enjoying his cricket. I don't think he's going to have to up his strike rate batting with Phil Salt," de Villiers said on the JioStar Press Room on Tuesday.

"Salt is one of the most attacking players we've ever seen. I think he's going to take a lot of pressure off Virat. Virat needs to continue what he's been doing for so many years...control the game, play smart cricket. He's got the best instinct of any player out there. He knows when to up the ante a bit and when to lower it,” he added.

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Furthermore, the former RCB batter who played for the franchise for 11 years, stated that Kohli needs to ensure that there are no batting collapses this season. Moreover, he added that Kohli was subjected to unnecessary criticism over the last few years.

"Virat needs to be the captain of the batting department in this tournament and really just keep things together, play smart cricket to make sure they don't find those collapses in the batting order,” he stated.

"There's no doubt some of the outside noise has maybe influenced him a bit. He's only human, he's definitely got those doubts in his head,” he went on to state.

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"But the one thing about Virat is that he's always had the ability to, when it matters most, when he crosses that line for his team, block everything out and it's business time,” he said.

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