Can Kohli finally master English conditions and quell Anderson’s doubts?
India captain needs to improve on dismal 2014 tour – when the bowler’s outswingers fooled him
It was the nearest to a fist-fight I have seen on a cricket field. Just before the fourth Test between India and England finished in Mumbai in December 2016, India’s fielders descended on James Anderson, who is not known to back down, when he came out to bat.
Anderson in a press conference had pooh-poohed India’s spinners as bowlers outside India, saying: “I’m not sure they’re too difficult to handle.” So Ravi Ashwin broke off from taking 28 wickets in the Test series to lead the response. But Anderson’s principal sin was to have disparaged India’s captain, Virat Kohli.
Anderson had not gone out of his way to be inflammatory – other than a bit of mischievousness in giving the hornet’s nest a stir. It was in his normal grumpy-gruff manner he reserved for press conferences – though not now he is paving the way for a media career – that he had voiced doubts about Kohli’s technique when the ball is swinging.
After all, Kohli’s five-test series in England in 2014 had been a disaster: destined for the top since being India Under-19 captain, already a World
Cup winner, he was set to eclipse Sachin Tendulkar because his batting was more attacking. But in England he had scored 134 runs, with a highest score of 39, and been dismissed by Anderson four times, as his dominant bottom hand made him play across the line of outswingers.
“I’m not sure he’s changed,” Anderson said in Mumbai. “I just think any technical deficiencies he’s got aren’t in play out here. The wickets just take that out of the equation.”
Yes, it was a slightly incautious statement after Kohli had scored 235 in the Mumbai Test. But Anderson had a point.
By signing up for a few games for Surrey after the last Indian Premier League, Kohli acknowledged that some technical tinkering was in order to adjust to English conditions, but a neck injury scuppered that. He had to make do with a couple of T20 internationals in Ireland, when he scored a duck and nine.
He stands at a fork in the road, one sign saying that all the stardom is getting too much and his career has peaked, the other that Anderson will be proved wrong.
Kohli’s fate will be decided not only by himself alone. The hotter and longer this warm spell lasts, the more like India will English conditions become. If it breaks and overhead conditions are cloudy, the more the ball will swing. It was jagging around in the Lord’s Test against West Indies last September and this series against India is not due to end until Sept 11.
Herein lies the chief individual fascination of the second half of this summer.