India vs England: Can Virat Kohli duck under the lean patch soon?
And if you take it in an individual context too, the Kohli vs Anderson contest offered restricted view in this four-match series. Until India’s first innings in the fourth Test, Kohli has faced 52 balls from Anderson and scored 11 runs without getting dismissed and in that 37 balls were bowled to him in the first Test at Chennai.
Kohli has faced fewer deliveries from Anderson only in that traumatic 2014 away series – 50 balls for 19 runs and was jettisoned 4 times. Against Anderson in 2012, Kohli negated 81 balls (made 23 runs), 112 balls in 2016 (home, made 69 runs) and 270 balls (and made 114 runs) in 2018 (away).
The difference in 2021 is that Kohli never lasted long enough to have a duel with Anderson apart from those two innings at the MA Chidambaram Stadium and it is not entirely Anderson’s doing either. The series offered a microcosm of the travails of Kohli since that double hundred against Bangladesh in late 2019. The Indian captain has not scored an international hundred after that despite crossing the 50 a few times across the formats.
Kohli has not looked either jerky or shaky at the crease all this while. In the second Test at Chennai, Moeen Ali bowled him with a gem that spun some miles from outside the off-stump to beat his defence. You don’t get that kind of ball often, right? In the on-going Test at Motera, Ben Stokes caught the edge of his bat with a brute, the ball kicking-up from the good length. Perhaps, a lesser batsman than Kohli could not have snicked it.
It is also not that he has not tried to get out of the rut. Once he was clean bowled by Moeen in the first innings of the second Test attempting that expansive drive, Kohli curbed his instinct to drive. It might have been immensely tough for him not to play a shot that fetched bagful runs against spinners in the past. The result was a 96-run alliance with R Ashwin.
