The Indian cricket team is riding the waves of success under the leadership of Virat Kohli. Team India is undoubtedly one of the most dominant sides in world cricket at the moment, winning not just at home but overseas too. On the tour of England, while India have taken a 1-0 lead after the first two games, Kohli’s performances on the personal level have been quite subdued.
0, 42 and 20 are Kohli’s scores in three innings of the five-match Test series against England so far. Across formats, the India skipper hasn’t scored a century since November 2019 and has also slipped to the 5th spot in the ICC Test rankings as a batsman. While Kohli’s bat has unarguably been silent for a while, former England skipper Nasser Hussain feels it’s because he is putting a lot in as a captain to help India win the Test series on the tour of England.
“You could argue that Kohli is putting so much into the captaincy of India now in his pursuit of a first Test series win in England as skipper that it has taken something away from his batting,” Daily Mail ahead of the third India-England Test at Headingley.
“He seems vulnerable again outside off-stump, as he was when he played here in 2014. Certainly he got out after a nothing shot to a wide ball from Sam Curran at Lord’s and the Kohli of the 2018 tour would have left that.
“But he knows how much it will mean to India to win this series. And he will judge himself on the results of the next three Tests rather than the runs he scores. He’d certainly be gutted if he scored centuries at Leeds and the Oval but lost the series anyway,” Hussain further opined.
