One bad defeat and Virat Kohli’s team is seen as no good overseas. His batting technique is under scrutiny, and so has the team’s ability to gel in unfamiliar conditions. This is the same team that played two close series in South Africa and England and won in Australia. Sometimes the scorecards can be deceptive and not tell the whole story.In South Africa, India lost the first Test by 72 runs and the second by 135 runs, but fought back to take the third by 63 runs. In England after losing a close first Test by 31 runs, India were beaten by an innings in the second. They fought back to win the third Test by 203 runs and came close to taking the fourth which they lost by 60 runs. The fifth Test could have gone either way after India conceded only a 40-run lead, though their fight ended on the fifth day.
The beauty of that series was India took 20 wickets in three Tests. In the other two, they bowled out the hosts once each. Another interesting point was that in six innings, England were not allowed to bat 100 overs. Performance of the bowlers gave India a big heart in Australia and they won a series there for the first time. The batsmen also came to party with handsome contributions. In all three series, Virat Kohli was the key with his batting. One can theorise to explain the defeat at Basin Reserve. Toss played a big part as New Zealand got to bat when there was little venom in the pitch and India lost the game when they allowed their tail to wag merrily. The lead could still have been kept to a manageable minimum when New Zealand were 225 for seven. The last three wickets added 123 runs. It turns out that the six-foot-eight Kyle Jamieson wanted to be a batsman till coaches around him, including the present chief coach of the national team Gary Stead, convinced him to bowl with the new ball. His batting skills were evident in his knock of 44 coming in at No 9. Trent Boult made a handy 38.
Hindsight is always handy and it is being said the selectors should not have left out KL Rahul from the Test squad. In away series, the pressure is that much more and experience counts. Rahul or his supporters are looking at his outstanding ODI scores while arguing his case for a Test place. Rahul in the last two years made 574 runs in 27 innings, 106 in his last five innings, at an average of 21. Another old complaint of Kohli surfaced, that Cheteshwar Pujara is putting pressure on the other batsmen by not rotating strike by getting bogged down, though the captain did not say so. But then these tactics worked for Pujara and the team in quite a few Tests.
Kohli himself failed in both innings and that left the team with nobody to play around. You have to believe him when he says “I am batting really well. I feel that sometimes scores don’t reflect the way you are batting. Look, when you play so much cricket and play for so long, obviously you’ll have three-four innings that don’t go your way. If you try and make too much out of it, it’ll keep piling on.”Kohli cleared Prithvi Shah and so Shubman Gill is unlikely to get a look-in at Christchurch. The other place that can be discussed is Ravichandran Ashwin, but it would be unfair to drop him for the team’s failure. After a long time, India’s bowling did not look menacing, barring Ishant Sharma who showed all his experience and guile to come up with a fifer. Both Mohammad Shami and Jasprit Bumrah need to get back into rhythm to check the New Zealand batsmen, who did not look all that convincing at Wellington. (The writer is a verteran commentator. Views expressed are personal. He can be reached at sveturi@gmail.com)