IND vs NZ: Virat Kohli tries to solve his issues against left-arm spinners | Cricket News
Virat Kohli began with firm defensive strokes on either feet, dead blocks where the ball fell beside his feet. After every stroke, he would observe the position of his feet, if they were where he wanted them to.
Impromptu, he unfurled a reverse sweep, a stroke he seldom plays but that he unpacks regularly in the nets. He was not quite to the pitch of it, but made the required adjustment. He paused his stroke, waited for the ball from the left-arm spinner to arrive and then gilded it fine from the off-stump. Encouraged, he asked the left-arm spinners to probe similar areas, but to vary their lengths. But each time, he played a different stroke. Left-arm spinners had been a late-career nemesis for him. From 2021, left-arm spinners had claimed him nine times for an average of 28. Hence, the extra emphasis on nullifying their threats
But Kohli is keen to slay those demons and as the outing progressed, he struck a violent rhythm. He shimmied down the track and heaved them to the stands. He cut and pulled whenever they erred on the shorter side. He felt the net bowlers were not troubling him enough, so he summoned Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja, until their batting stints came.
Such was the demand of the spinners that towards the end of the session, Kohli had to be satisfied with fast bowlers, who he brutally drove. He sweated buckets. But it barely mattered, as he found a batting zen that he would love to replicate during the Test. Nayar was empathetic to him. “At times when a top player, who has been through the whole journey goes through a lull, it is about giving them their space and trusting that they will come back. They will put in the work.” Kohli certainly did, a fierce sense of purpose reflecting on his net stints.
