Felled by flight again, Virat Kohli feels it’s all about ‘mind-set’
SOME 35 minutes into the third day’s play, there was only one question that seemed to be on everyone’s mind at Mohali. Where are the South African spinners? Maybe even Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara were asking each other the same as they met mid-pitch at the end of each over during that time. On a pitch that has been talked up as a spinner’s paradise, Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada were the only bowlers that the two overnight Indian batsmen had to contend with.
Yes, Hashim Amla had obviously preferred to start with his two best available bowlers— Dale Steyn having been ruled out with an injured groin. And the strategy had even worked, with the Protea seamers keeping Kohli and Pujara in check, and not allowing the home team to grab the momentum in any way. But the Indians had survived.
But as it turned out, it was the introduction of spinners that commenced the downfall of the Indian second innings, as Imran Tahir and Simon Harmer ran through the middle-order — after the gentle medium-pace of Stiaan van Zyl had accounted for Kohli. It meant that India had lost 15 of their 20 wickets in the match to the South African spinners. And not for the first time in the last 18 months, spin had proved to be the modern-day Indian Test batsman’s serious weak-link.
The eventual margin of victory — 108 runs — though seemingly comprehensive, was a tad misleading, and if not for the visitors’ even worse handling of spin, there were enough moments at Mohali, especially when India were batting, where the match could have turned the other way. The first Test of the four-match series also was another reminder that Kohli & Co are far from conquering their most brazen shortcoming. And despite being chuffed about winning his first Test as captain on home soil, Kohli seconded both those opinions.
“The match was not comfortable as the margin suggests. We have not performed well as a batting unit. We made errors rather than having a fear of spin. Short judgmental errors and which will be reflected upon and need to be corrected when we come out to play in the future,” he said.
Tahir and Harmer were the latest spinners to make the most of the Indian batting line-up’s collective weakness against spin. On Saturday, Tahir got Pujara with a tossed-up leg-break; Rahane fell to an off-break with generous flight. Seeing the Indians falter against spin once more was worryingly reminiscent of their issues against England’s Moeen Ali — who finished with 19 wickets against them on English pitches that too — and Australia’s Nathan Lyon, who scalped 16 Indians with his high-quality off-spin. And then there was the Galle disaster two months ago, where India completely messed up a grand opportunity to post a famous win and rather fell in a heap to Rangana Herath.
And regardless of whether the pitch is spin-friendly or just speculated to be so, Kohli will realize that totals of 201 and 200 will not win him Tests very often, and that his batsmen will have to get to grips with tackling spin.
“We have played spin relatively badly in the past too. Once it happened in Galle and I think the problem has been that we lost wickets too quickly. We get a partnership and then we lose 2-3 wickets immediately. That needs to improve. Apart from that, everyone plays spin well. So it’s just the mind-set where you can think of five different things if you want to play a certain stroke thinking that the ball might go there or other place as well. Apart from the fact that you need to think of only one thing that you want to hit the ball at certain place and hit,” explained Kohli.
The Indian Test captain was also honest enough to admit that this batsmen failed to apply themselves, except Murali Vijay and Pujara, but couldn’t quite single out exactly why his batsmen have been coming up short against spinners, regardless of their stature or skill-levels, so regularly. It is an issue that Indian cricket has probably never had to deal with, but is one that Kohli needs to find a solution to very quickly with the rest of the pitches for this series expected to test them.
“We have played a lot of cricket away from home. We have not played lot of cricket on turning pitches. We have not played lot of domestic cricket. So that can be a case. One more reason could be it’s always said that Indian players or Asian players are very good players of spin. That might pressurize few guys that we have to play spin well. So it can be anything. I think it’s the second innings that we have not played spin well. It’s again a mind-set thing where some sort of fear creeps in. it has been happening often and maybe that’s an area we can improve,” said Kohli.
