BGT: How Australian fast bowlers can exploit Virat Kohli’s old ‘outside off-stump’ problem | Cricket News
Starting with the first Test in Perth and then the pink-ball game at Adelaide, the Australian pacers are expected to exploit Virat Kohli’s outside-the-offstumps problems. It’s an issue that Kohli faced in the past. There has been a pattern to the way pace bowlers set him up. It’s either a few away going deliveries before the in-darter or the reverse. New Zealand’s Kylie Jamieson once did both varieties in a Test to take him out in contrasting styles in the two innings.
Help from Tendulkar
A couple of years ago, Tendulkar had spoken briefly about his work with Kohli to this newspaper. Kohli had said: “He (Tendulkar) made me realise the importance of a big stride, a forward press against fast bowlers as well. The moment I started doing that with my hip alignment, things started ironing out nicely.”
Tendulkar had explained why he had framed the shoulder situation in terms of hip movement via a forward press. “If alignment changes then the shoulder automatically opens. When the hip position is nice and compact, then the shoulders will not open. Many times people will tell you that your shoulder khul raha hai, shoulder khul raha hai (shoulder has opened up). But people forget what is the root cause of it,” Tendulkar said.
Three years or so back, after a string of problems against the ball outside off stump, Kohli tightened his game to be a touch more defensive or more compact. The stance became a touch more open, and the bat was held pointing almost right behind him, as opposed to the first slip as it used to be. With the bat coming down a lot straighter, he began to be more tighter — or more circumspect — with his cover drives.
But he would still nick them when he went chasing, ironically as this straighter downward bat-swing meant, the bat-face would open that bit more than at his pomp in his drives, allowing the ball to catch the edge. He also alternated between taking a middle-stump guard and the leg-stump guard, depending on where he wanted to end up after his initial trigger movement and depending on the pitches.
