Former England skipper Nasser Hussain feels it is the partnership between Virat Kohli and the head coach Ravi Shastri behind the success of the team. He further mentions Shastri will not ask Kohli to stop going after James Anderson.
Virat Kohli and James Anderson were involved in a heated war of words during the second Test match at the Lord’s between the two teams. The conversation was overheard from the stump mic as Kohli was hitting back at Anderson for using foul words.
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“Ravi Shastri, as a coach, will just let Kohli go. He won’t mind seeing him exchanging words with Anderson or signalling from the balcony to try to get the players off for bad light. It is the captain who is very much in charge,” Hussain wrote in his column for the Daily Mail ahead of the third Test at Headingley which begins on Wednesday.
Other than the Kohli-Anderson duel, several other players from both sides were seen going at each other. Jasprit Bumrah received words from Anderson, Jos Buttler and Mark Wood during different points in the game.
“What Kohli in particular represents is modern-day India, the one that won’t be pushed around. Even though umpires might like to remind him occasionally that he doesn’t run the game,” Hussain said.
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He further praised Ajinkya Rahane and Rohit Sharma for constantly backing Kohli’s aggressive style of playing cricket.
“More significant, perhaps, are the senior players Kohli has beside him. Rohit Sharma was right there when he was complaining about the light, and both he and Rahane are integral to the tactics of India. Rohit might come across as a calm, slow heartbeat sort of guy but he is very driven to succeed too.
“Captains can’t tick every box and Kohli can follow the ball a bit in the field. Sometimes he will do something and you will think, “What is he doing that for?” That’s when he will look to his lieutenants for assistance,” he added.
India won the Lord’s Test by 151 runs and will go with a 1-0 lead in the Leeds Test, which will commence on August 25.
