Tourists will need to adopt fearless mode to bring India’s new one-day captain down from the rare levels at which he is batting in the 50-over gameVirat Kohli spoke engagingly for 10 minutes before sweeping out of the room and down the wide concrete stairs at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, trailed by an ever-thickening swarm of hangers-on, and drawing from somewhere a Beatlemania-style barrage of squeals as he emerged briefly into the light before heading out to the middle for practice.It seems fair to say there is not another cricketer quite like Kohli, if only because there never has been. Even other modern Indian heroes – the endlessly revered Sachin Tendulkar, the punchier, poppier MS Dhoni – have been...
There is no rush to hand over the leader’s baton but an early decision would allow Joe Root to bed down in time for the Ashes series next winterFronting up to the media after a Test defeat is something Alastair Cook has now done more than any other England captain and after the final-day collapse in Chennai he turned to the room of assembled journalists that had just grilled him in the bowels of the stadium to wish them a merry Christmas and a safe flight home.If reporting this farewell sounds unctuous then consider the circumstances: the self-destructive tendency of his batsmen, on a pitch that just 24 hours had seen his bowlers ship a torturous 759 for seven, made...
Despite the 4-0 Test series defeat in India, only minor surgery is required for a squad that has lost none of its thrilling potentialEngland are still a collection of richly talented individuals: exhilarating and deadly on their day but prone to batting collapses and missed opportunities. They did a lot of good things during the series against India and deserve enormous admiration for not allowing their spirit to break in the face of a sadistic itinerary and an unavoidable hammering. Despite a 4-0 defeat, they need only minor surgery.The good news for their weary players is that they do not return to the subcontinent until a trip to Sri Lanka in 2018-19. They had a bespoke team structure for this...
The opening batsman could not hide his disappointment at getting out on 199 despite a classic subcontinental innings for IndiaThe story goes that when KL Rahul was coming through the ranks of his Ranji Trophy side, Karnataka, he had a curious habit of playing out innings while he slept, with room-mates at away games startled in the night as he called for quick singles or celebrated centuries while making an almighty racket in the process.Following the third day against England at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, when India’s opener became just the ninth batsman in the history of Test cricket to fall on 199, you fancy the shot that resulted in his demise will be another such moment to be played out...
Most batsmen would be delighted with the year Root has had, but he is irked to have often fallen with a century there for the taking. In Chennai, the story was the sameIf Joe Root was just a regular batsman he would look back on 2016 with little but fondness, having scored more heavily in Test cricket than ever before and during this time produced a career-best score of 254 against Pakistan in the summer.With one innings to go in Chennai, Root has returned 1,471 runs – a total that has him two ahead of Jonny Bairstow as the pair vie to overhaul Michael Vaughan’s England record of 1,481 in 2002 – and for the second year running has matched...