KING KOHLI AND THE KID
But India’s run machine can’t match Curran
As India reached 123 for three in pursuit of 245, history was starting to tap them on the shoulder. To be more precise, it was tapping on the shoulder of Virat Kohli.
Few players have threatened to define a Test series as remorselessly as Kohli has here. He has scored 544 runs in four matches — more than twice as many as the next best, Jos Buttler — and has starred in almost every big moment. Gallingly for India’s captain, he has also finished on the losing side.
sure enough, Kohli was once more the axis on which this Test pivoted. With only minutes to go before tea, Moeen Ali had him dropped by Alastair Cook at short leg — a sharp chance that would have belonged to the category marked ‘screamer’ had it been held. India breathed again.
But the next ball bounced a bit more and brushed the underside of Kohli’s right glove before lobbing up to Cook, who made no mistake.
such is Kohli’s value to this team — think Diego Maradona for Argentina at the 1986 World Cup — that he opted for a review anyway. You never know: the technology might have suffered a timely blip.
It confirmed his demise, however, and Kohli left to a few words from the fielders — retaliation, perhaps, for the broadside he had aimed at Joe Root on saturday when the England captain walked out a place lower than usual at No 4 and was mocked mercilessly as a result.
They might also have been thinking about his narrow escape on nine, when they were convinced he was leg-before to Moeen — only for third umpire Joel Wilson to uphold Kumar Dharmasena’s verdict.
In private, the England players have been unimpressed by Kohli’s on-field antics and constant chatter. But there is no denying the value they place on his wicket, nor the respect they have for his ability. It should also be pointed out that Kohli remains gracious in defeat and honest about his team’s shortcomings away from home.
Because for all his brilliance, the truth is clear: when he loses his wicket, India lose their self-belief. In the first innings, his dismissal for 46, driving loosely at sam Curran, triggered a collapse of six for 53. In the second, his departure for 58 was the first of seven wickets to fall for 61. He is India’s alpha and omega. The pressure must be almost unbearable.
Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane have both contributed at times in this series, but Kohli has been a giant among men. Had India won this game, they would have given themselves the chance to become only the second side — after Don Bradman’s 1936-37 Australians against England — to win a Test series from 2-0 down. Then he really would have been breathing rarefied air.
Yet despite his weight of runs, even Kohli has been unable to bend Tests to his will quite like 20- year- old Curran, a player England may finally be realising how lucky they are to have.
Player of the match in the first Test at Edgbaston, he was dropped two games later to accommodate a rusty Ben stokes. sure enough, England lost at Trent Bridge without Curran. It was a dunderheaded piece of selection.
But Curran’s capacity to seize the moment was in evidence again in southampton, where he dredged a competitive first-innings total from the rubble of 86 for six, just as he saved England’s bacon after they had slipped to 87 for seven in Birmingham.
In the three Tests the selectors have allowed him in this series, he has averaged 50 with the bat and 23 with the ball; stokes’s figures are 25 and 26. And when Root wanted one final wicket here, it was to Curran that he threw the ball. The youngster obliged by removing Ravichandran Ashwin almost immediately.
Curran has also trumped Kohli in being able to paper over the obvious cracks in his own team. It is a priceless capacity.
At some point Curran will fail, and England will face more probing questions about the repetitive malfunctioning of their top order. But for now, he can do no wrong. How Kohli would love to have him.
It’s clear that
when Virat is out, India lose
their self-belief