Former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar has discussed Virat Kohli’s place in the fab four of the Test cricket and compared him with Kane Williamson, Joe Root, and Steve Smith and whether the other three have gone ahead of the Indian batter in red-ball cricket.
This came after Virat Kohli failed to come good in the ongoing ICC World Test Championship (WTC 2023) final against Australia which got underway on June 7, 2023, at the Oval in London.
India captain Rohit Sharma had won the toss and chosen to bowl first keeping the then overcast conditions in mind and India went with four pacers, leaving out Ravi Ashwin from the playing XI.
This proved to be a bad call as the overcast conditions turned to sunny ones in some time and despite India reducing Australia to 71/3, Steve Smith (121) and Travis Head (163) added 285 runs for the fourth wicket to bring Australia back in the game.
Alex Carey then hit 48 runs to propel Australia to the final score of 469 runs. For India, Mohammed Siraj picked 4/108, while Mohammad Shami and Shardul Thakur picked two wickets apiece.
India needed a big score from Virat Kohli, after openers Shubman Gill (14) and Rohit Sharma (15) fell early and then Cheteshwar Pujara lost his stump shouldering the ball for 15 runs. Kohli did look good for his 15 runs, but was out to Mitchell Starc, after on ball from good length bounced awkwardly and Kohli edged it to slips.
India finished day two on 151/5 after Ravindra Jadeja made a quick 48 and Ajinkya Rahane remains unbeaten on 29 runs.
The Runs He’s Making Are On The Back Of His Mental Toughness And Not Technique: Sanjay Manjrekar On Virat Kohli
After the day’s play, Sanjay Manjrekar discussed Virat Kohli’s technique and his place in Fab four of Test cricket while comparing him to Kane Williamson, Joe Root and Steve Smith.
After being asked by the ESPNCricinfo presenter about where Virat Kohli stands in the Fab Four in Tests given that the other three have scored massive runs in the format in the last 3-4 years, Kohli is well behind them.
Manjrekar then pointed out that all three of them- Williamson, Smith, and Root are backfoot players and when the ball is short, they deal with it easily as they are within their crease.
But for Kohli he said: “Whereas Kohli’s technique is different. IF you remember when he was in his prime, and made all those hundreds in Adelaide, one shot he used to play a lot was the pull shot. HE would pull even a slight short ball on back foot.
But now it looks like he has full faith in his front foot technique, he’s backing it to the hilt. The runs he’s making now is purely due to his mental toughness and experience and other abilities he has. But this front foot play of his against pace is the reason he’s finding run making difficult”