Virat Kohli can prove that Indian cricket can’t forget him yet… if he knows where his off-stump is

Shouldn’t the two be included in the India A team that was to play Australia A at home in a 50-overs series or play domestic one-dayers? The biggest worry expressed by those who doubted their participation in the 2027 World Cup was their lack of match-day outings. Even the chairman of the selection committee Ajit Agarkar had raised this issue.

But do seasoned batsmen like Kohli and Rohit, legends of the game who have spent more than half their lives smashing the white-ball into stands around the world, need time in the middle to retain their sharpness and regain their erstwhile aura? Is the importance of match practice overstated?

There was also the flip side. Can a ‘hit’ at the indoor facility be enough for a batting great to keep the competitive and batting edge razor sharp? Will the glare of the spotlight, the switching on of the floodlights in a stadium chanting his name, be enough to reignite the muscle memory?

Kohli’s post with Amin. (Photo credit: Virat Kohli – Instagram)

No long rope

There’s also the pressure — the crippling disruptor that can mess up that best of preparation. Rohit being replaced by the 26-year-old Shubman Gill as the ODI captain within months of winning the ICC Champions Trophy, is a loud enough hint for the seniors — they are now just one series failure away from being irrelevant to Indian cricket. This is a brutal world out there, the only long rope for those in their late 30s is the one circling the boundary line.

Brace yourselves…they’re 𝘽𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙄𝙣 𝘽𝙡𝙪𝙚𝙨 🔥

Rohit Sharma 🤝 Virat Kohli

🎥 Watch on loop as the duo gears up for #AUSvIND 💪 #TeamIndia | @ImRo45 | @imVkohli pic.twitter.com/u99yHyFfwJ

— BCCI (@BCCI) October 17, 2025

This is a unique situation, an uncharted territory even for a consummate cricket traveler like Virat. It has never been done before but then Virat has several firsts to his credit. The resolve was still there. Within days of landing in Australia, there would be another social media statement: “The only time you truly fail, is when you decide to give up.” This was getting interesting but it wasn’t going to be easy. It has never been.

Like was the case last time he visited Australia for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy earlier this year. It would prove to be his last in India whites. Virat started the tour with a hundred at Perth but by the end of the 5th Test at Sydney, questions were being asked about his temperament, skills, drive and ability to learn from his mistakes.

His last dismissal in Australia had summed up his series, it was a reoccurrence of an old symptom of a chronic batting problem that he had battled all through his long career. In the past, a younger Virat had time to reflect and rediscover his lost touch but now he doesn’t have that luxury. He couldn’t hide his frustration.

ALSO READ | Inside Story of BGT: Virat Kohli thrived as stand-in captain, but as batsman, he was chasing a ghost

In the second innings of the final Test, the crafty old Scott Boland, the expert exploiter of old weaknesses, would stick to the line outside off-stump and work on the ball to get a sharp lift and move it away from the batsman. An uncertain Virat would stay in the crease and try to reach for the ball. As expected he would edge the ball into the hands of second slip.

Virat would let out a cry — the echoes might be heard at those glorious Australian stadiums this time too. This time he is in Australia to play white-ball cricket but Virat has struggled to figure out where his off-stump is in this format too. Even in IPL, he gets bowled to the Test-match line. It could be the same in the three ODIs again. Bowlers don’t forget.

It’s not that Virat had adopted an ostrich approach to the problem, he hasn’t buried his head in the stand and wished the problem away. At the start of the forgettable BGT series, he was stationed outside the crease. It’s a tactic that batsmen use in England to counter the swing but Virat was doing so to negotiate the bounce that bowlers got on the hard Aussie pitches. He was trying to ride the bounce but would fail. Not known to play with soft hands, the edges from the bat would carry to the catchers behind the stumps. He would backtrack to the crease after a few failures but lack of a strong back-foot game would hamper his play. Now, he wasn’t suitably front or back, Virat was caught in two minds and the nightmare would continue.

Back in the day, even the great Sachin Tendulkar, has worked with Virat to iron out his foot-work flaw. After one disastrous tour to England, India’s two great batsmen had collaborated and the results were pleasing. Tendulkar suggested changes in the hip alignment and back-leg movement and runs would flow again. But with time, old habits surfaced again.

In 2021, he tampered his stance, took a virtual off-middle guard. He now had his head in the line of off-stump, this too seemed like a workable plan. Anything outside the eye-line, he would leave alone thus negating the away going balls. However, since he was covering all the three stumps, Virat was a likely candidate to be out lbw. In case he missed a ball coming in sharply or kept in line or if he failed to connect an on-drive to a ball on his pads, Virat would get out lbw.

“Virat Kohli at Melbourne vs. Virat Kohli at Sydney 🏏🔥 #ViratKohli #INDvsAUS #INDvsAUSTest pic.twitter.com/BT7xH9nY0Y

— CrickWired (@crick_wired) January 3, 2025

Batsmanship is a delicate art, it needs incredible anticipation, immaculate judgement of where the ball would pitch, subtle feet movement to reach it and fine transfer of weight. Virat has been around long enough, scored a mountain of runs to know this. Long back, when Virat was younger, run-making was second nature, the batting genius had given a peep into the mind in a podcast with Graham Bensinger.

“Batting is about a split second of decision. The precision of that split-second has to be so good for every ball during the game. With visualisation you have to have worked on both the mental and technical side of his game,” he would say.

An indoor session in the company of friendly coaches is very different from facing hostile pacers bowling on the 4th-5th stump line. It’s never easy to be on the stage when the curtains are about to fall and the final bow may be just a dismissal away.

Virat is under no illusion, he knows that age is catching up and the end could be near and not far. During the June-July-August England tour, Virat had turned for his old friend Yuvraj Singh’s charity event. He was called on stage. The MC’s ice-breaker was him informing the superstar that India misses him. “I just coloured my beard two days back… when you start doing that after every four days, it is time,” he said, stroking his chin.

The conversation would shift to Yuvraj and Virat would recall his one-time senior’s last year as an international cricketer. He would take the wide-eyed fans in the glittering London hall to a ODI game in Cuttack with Yuvraj scoring a 150 and had a 250 runs plus partnership with MS Dhoni, who too scored a big hundred in that game.

“I was sitting with KL Rahul in the dressing room watching the two. I told him this is like going back to the childhood days, watching these two stitching partnerships and saving India,” Virat would say.

How time flies, now in Australia there will be a couple of 20-something stars, Shubman and Yashasvi Jaiswal, who too would be reliving their childhood when Rohit and Virat take the field. Will they be stitching partnerships and saving India?