Just rewind to 2020, 2021, and 2022 – all of a sudden, one of the best batsmen of the modern game was found struggling with his form. He was struggling against the moving ball and the struggle against the spinners. The critics of Kohli became vocal and in every dismissal – the Indian superstar was heavily criticized by the fans and former players.
According to an analytical article published at Wisden last
year, it was stated that Kohli had been dismissed eleven times in Test cricket
in India since the start of 2020. Nine of those dismissals came against
spinners like Ajaz Patel, Dhananjaya de Silva, Dom Bess, Jack Leach, Lasith
Embuldeniya, Moeen Ali, and Rachin Ravindra.
While against the pacers, the line outside the fourth and
fifth stump line became a nemesis again.
In 2014, he explained to Naseer Hussain that while taking a
stance, Virat's back toe was slanted and pointed toward the cover rather than
the point for which he opened up more exposing his edge.
He expected the inswingres in the 2014 England tour whereas his wrong toe position took him towards the fourth and fifth stump.
He discussed with Sachin Tendulkar who worked on this and adjusted his toe towards the point. He started taking an off-stump guard which helped him weather the deliveries going towards the fourth and fifth stump and then he batted outside of his crease to play the good length as half volleys.
After 2019 and till now, the old problems had started to
show up again - his toe was pointing towards cover and thus, the lean patch was
prolonged – the back and across movement was not striking the right chord because
of a defect in the basic.
Sunil Gavaskar stated at that time, “That method has been
successful for him. He has got 8,000 Test runs with that back-and-across
movement. But he is playing at deliveries way outside off stump and a little
too early in the innings. This time around, the foot is somewhere else, the bat
is somewhere else.”
At his peak, Kohli used to rock back and execute the short-am whip towards midwicket to get off the mark and settle at the wicket. He forced the bowler to bowl short of a length and played shots by staying deep at the crease – obviously, the back and across movement stayed and was helping him until 2020, and thereon, Kohli started to realize he needed to be a bit more square on rather than sticking to the old plan.
While against the spinners, he decided to go fully forward or fully back rather than getting stuck on the crease.
Kohli accepted that his batting needs a reboot and until and
unless you don’t accept your flaws, you can’t get out of the hole.
Kohli went back to the basics – his intent was to spend more time at the crease, play the ball late with perfect hand-and-eye coordination, fix the back lift, adopt the two-eyed open stance while facing spinners and swing bowlers so that it complements the initial trigger movement on the back foot and rely more on strike-rotation.
The second version of Kohli is more like Javed Miandad – a
mentality beast, who would hold one end firm and keep the scoreboard ticking at
a rate so that the team never comes under pressure.
In the most anticipated match against New Zealand during the
group stage match of ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 at Dharamsala – on a tricky
deck, Kohli showed why he is highly rated as a player both technically and
temperamentally.
The New Zealand left-arm orthodox bowlers had India under
pressure and at one point India lost five wickets with still 83 runs to get.
But Kohli dug deeper and played the 50-over format like it should be played when the bowling attack is posing a threat and the deck is on the slower side.
His batting was not all about style but it was about the
compassion of a man who never gives up and fights his way to rediscover his
mojo. The Kohli of today occupies the crease and relies on depth touches rather
than slicing the attack – he is the captain who steers the ship safely to the
shore by absorbing the pressure – the more the pressure, the more Kohli
flourishes.
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
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