Virat Kohli will be leaving for England once the IPL gets wrapped up. Prior to India’s 2 months long Cricketing tour in England, Kohli will be seen playing for the English County team – Surrey during this summer.
It is a welcoming decision by BCCI as the Kohli’s Surrey stint might help Virat Kohli a lot more than what we might expect.
We all know how important is this English tour to Virat Kohli as well the Indian test team which has done brilliantly well in the recent South African tour. The English test conditions will be challenging for any travelling teams and it’s captain.
So here is a well crafted writing from our guest writer Ravi Rathi on what to expect and what is there waiting for Virat Kohli in the tours to come.
Also, Ravi interestingly depicts how Virat is more of what Ponting was for Australia. Yes, you read it right.
Now on to Ravi,
Painstaking batsmanship…
It is given to only a Ponting to shun impulse and instinct so little in the quest of a mountain of test runs. Take away the 1999 Barbados test innings, and we have a test batsman who hardly ever had to temper his inner tempest with discretion so little.
Heavens knows what his fate might have been, had he NOT shown patience in that innings. Steve Waugh and the Aussie selectors would have him for lunch. Then again, had he NOT stood ground and claimed that a clean catch had not been taken off his bat, in the slips, in the 2001 Leeds, and then got a life-saving test century again, what would have been his test batting destiny?
Virat is the batsman of 2018, what Ponting was, in the five year period after getting a match-winning fourth-innings century in the 2002 SA tour. Intelligently aggressive, managing the givens and demands of brilliance with cool, crafty, batting cunning.
Now, England and Australia beckon.
Virat still has some hard cricket to play before the titanic challenges of test cricket in England and Australia await him.
Whether he will be totally drained by the amount of cricket played by him from the October 2016 till his last match of IPL 2018 phase…or whether the Scorpio stamina will stand up and make itself count…delicious anticipation.
One thing is for sure.
His defence will be severely tested in England. He has a bad history of test batting in England. He will be just a few months away from turning 30. He would have had batted so much for so long that he could be weary and worn off in (batting) spirit.
He is more a Ponting heir than a Tendulkar heir. It means that playing dot balls, playing a succession of dot balls, playing a huge succession of dot balls….against a deviously moving cherry…. could well be beyond him. He is just NOT made that way, as a batsman. He has to disprove that.
All-time greatness as a test bat is at stake here.
He is, of course, the best ODI batsman of the 21st century, never mind Sachin, Sangakkara, Jayasuriya, Ponting, Haq, A.B.DeVelliers, Gilchrist, Sehwag, Afridi and company. A certain Steve Smith has shown more consistency than him, in tests.
Bat long hours, Virat. Bat hard. Show stout iron-clad defence.
Judge the length and trajectory of the moving ball in England. Quickly. And deal with it the way Dravid did, in 2011.
Safely. Assuredly. Correctly.
No flash, flourish and flamboyance, please.
A lot is at stake.
Never mind the single test win, we lost two tests in SA.
Let England NOT be a repeat.
Become the Vengsarkar of 1986.
That is the dire need and necessity of the situation.
Cool test batting head will be rewarded.
No rushes of blood, please.T ake body blows willingly. Reply fire with technical finesse.
The Steve Waugh of 1989 Ashes…
Become that…and you are India’s GOAT.
To Close,
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