I think bringing up a 48 in an Asia Cup final helps his case tbh. Kinda scraping the barrel when you're talking about two batsmen who many would consider ATGs, particularly Kohli.
Sure, the bottler tag is provocative and we can get into arguments about the sample size when discussing knockouts, but I don't think it's particularly controversial to say Kohli has been disappointing in ODI world tournaments by his standards.
I'm with Basit Ali and Amirfan on this one lads.
it's not what's being said, it's whose saying it and how they're saying it that's annoying everyone.
My 2 cents:
If you use WC Semi-Finals and Finals as the be-all metric for whether or not a batsman is a 'bottler', then the stats prove that Kohli and Rohit are under par. Sure.
However, I don't necessarily agree with this definition of 'pressure' game. Surely there are non WC semi-finals/finals that, to the batsman, carry a significant amount of weight as well. I struggle to think of any examples off the top of my head for these two, but I won't be surprised if there are innings they have played where they felt they were under tremendous pressure to perform, even if it isn't obvious to us watching. It is also possible they walked out to bat vs NZ being complacent, thinking they had a simple run-chase ahead of them, and that the hard work had been done on the field. I do not know for sure, but I think these possibilities should be considered, and a slightly broader definition of 'pressure games' should be used.
Secondly, I don't think it's 'bottling' if a technical flaw in your game gets exposed. Rohit Sharma has offered an early opportunity in 4 or 5 other innings this WC, and they were mostly not taken. This time around, it was. He's also not the first batsman you would pick to see off a spell of accurate fast medium outswing bowling in the channel. As for Virat Kohli, he's been caught LBW playing across his pads a lot. We could see a Boult inswinger trapping him in front from a mile away. The fact that he fell in such a manner does not indicate he choked under pressure, atleast to me. They both got good balls targeted at their weaknesses. It was high quality bowling and they just weren't good enough to see it out that day. This same thing happened in the zero pressure atmosphere of a warmup game. Sometimes it's just a bad style match-up, and there is very little you can do about it. Credit has to go to Henry and Boult for being basically perfect in their execution.