India vs England 2nd Test: Gavaskar finds flaws in Kohli’s technique

Like skipper Joe Root did for England, the onus was on his Indian counterpart to score a big innings and bring his team back into the game in the ongoing second Test, but he could not do so.

On the penultimate day of the second Test of the five-match series at the Lord’s Cricket ground, Kohli made a promising start (20 off 31) before poking at a wide Sam Curran delivery to leave his team in dire straits at the stroke of lunch.

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The Indian skipper also got into a heated argument with England’s bowling spearhead James Anderson during his brief stay the crease.

“That method has been successful for him. He has got 8,000 Test runs with that back and across movement. But he’s playing at deliveries way outside off stump and a little too early in the innings.

“This time around, the foot is somewhere else, the bat is somewhere else, which means that he hasn’t really played well,” Gavaskar said on air while during his commentary stint with the Sony Sports network.

“It could be about this much-talked-about word intent but in a five-day game, every batsman goes in to score runs. It’s the method that differs,” he added.

Since the 2018 Oval Test against England, Kohli is eighth among the Indian batsmen with most runs, which itself sums up the sorry state of affiars.

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The struggle to avoid repetition of mistakes by Kohli has been very frustrating at times. On the current tour of Old Blightly, it looks as though Kohli has invoked an old ghost as he has often perished outside the off-stump.

Anderson (Nottingham) and Ollie Robinson (Lord’s) snared him bowling the fourth stump line.

Gavaskar dwelled further on the flaws in Kohli’s technique, “When you talk about this trying to take this attack to the opposition approach, and if that’s what intent is, it can get you into trouble as we saw. I think every batsman should be left alone to find his own method. This is a Test match.”

Gavaskar, the first batsman in Test cricket to breach 10,000-run mark, added that the technique required to succeed for the longer version of the game, is much different compared to the one in the shorter-ball formats.

“In ODI and T20I, it’s a completely different situation, but over here, what they need to look into is get themselves in and try to play in the old-fashioned ‘V’. Play only when you’ve fought through,” Gavaskar concluded.