Virat Kohli risks suffering Rohit Sharma-like fate, puts Ravi Shastri's belief in jeopardy amid reluctance to learn
Seven times in seven innings has Virat Kohli fallen to the outside off stump trap, with no end in sight.
Seven out of seven. It’s the kind of score that would be welcome in most instances, but not when one of the premier batters of his generation gets out in the same fashion seven times in a row.
This has been a series to forget for Virat Kohli. And to think that it started with so much promise a month and a quarter ago, with a second-innings century in the opening Test in Perth.
Increasingly, the unbeaten 100 at the Optus Stadium is beginning to look like an anomaly, an aberration. Once in a rare while, like in the first innings in Melbourne, he has promised to reprise that Perth essay, but more often than not, he has flattered to deceive, sucked involuntarily into feeling for the ball outside the off-stump and presenting catches behind the wickets, either to the wicketkeeper or to the slip cordon.
Kohli’s cricketing life has been marked by the kind of supreme dedication and discipline that only comes to a driven few. Less than a half-decade after making his international debut, he revamped his lifestyle, committing himself totally to a rigorous physical and dietary regimen that made him among the fittest cricketers in the world. Even today, at 36, he is as fit as anyone in the sport globally, which is a huge tick in the box. He continues to be an outstanding fielder and has grown as a slip catcher, reiterating his desire to keep pushing the boundaries of excellence.
While he maintains that desire when it comes to his batting as well, the wheels are beginning to come off. Some would say spectacularly so.
The Sydney Cricket Ground, and the final Test of a five-Test rubber that seemed to have started a million years back, offered him one last chance to leave an indelible mark in a must-win game if India are to keep their World Test Championship finals hopes alive and retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Especially with Rohit Sharma opting out of the game in deference to his extraordinarily poor recent form, the responsibility on Kohli to shepherd the batting became that might more on a surface where the ball seamed around liberally all day.
Kohli could have been dismissed first ball when he edged Scott Boland and Steve Smith seemed to have got his fingers under the ball at second slip. But as he was in the process of tossing the ball towards gully – where Marnus Labuschagne caught it cleanly – because he was losing control, the ball seemed to make momentary contact with the turf in TV umpire Joel Wilson's estimation. Kohli must have heaved a sigh of relief, perhaps believing that his luck was finally turning, that his first mistake wouldn’t be his last at least this time.
Virat Kohli's hour-long stay at the crease ends in another disappointment
But having fought it out for 107 minutes and 68 deliveries, it was disappointing to see him reach out for a sixth-stump ball, also from Boland, with hard hands and give Beau Webster, the debutant, his second good catch of the day at third slip. To get out first ball would have been understandable; to get out in this fashion off his 69th was certainly not. This mode of dismissal has now become more than a pattern. Ravi Shastri, the former head coach and one of Kohli’s most vociferous backers, has said the former skipper could play for another three or four years. Not even the greatest optimist in the world will back up Shastri’s assertion.
Just as it was unthinkable seven weeks back that Rohit would excuse himself from the final Test, it was unimaginable that Kohli wouldn't be an automatic choice for the five-Test series in England later this year. It's possible that he will be on that tour, but it won't be as the Kohli with the swagger of the past. The corridor of uncertainty was his greatest bugbear in England in 2014, when he made just 134 runs from ten innings. Even accounting for the fact that pitches in England no longer facilitate pronounced seam because that is anathema to their Bazball style, recent evidence confirms that the carrot in the channel is pretty much irresistible when it comes to Kohli.
It shouldn't be an unsolvable problem, should it? That’s the question many experts have rhetorically posed. Kohli came with a slightly revised batting set-up – more side-on, less to no bat-tap before the ball is delivered -- on Friday and that too didn’t pay off. He has spent long hours at nets hitting balls, but that isn’t fetching the desired results. There is a certain inevitability to his flirtations outside off and that, as much as the string of poor scores, is reason enough to wonder just how much longer…
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