10 hours ago
Joe Root dissects Virat Kohli's outside off-stump woes: Technical changes can backfire
Star England batter Joe Root recently commented on the outside off-stump woes of Indian batting stalwart Virat Kohli. The former India captain announced his retirement from the longest format ahead of the all-important series against England. Kohli had been enduring poor form in the longest format in the post-COVID era as bowlers exploited his weakness outside the off stump time and Root also shared his views on Kohli's weakness in the latter part of his career, saying that it gets really difficult for a batter to bounce back as they hardly have any time in between Test matches. Root also mentioned that facing a world-class bowling attack also makes it even more challenging.'Every player is different. If you're in a five-match Test series and there's something in your game that doesn't sit well with you, it can be difficult. You haven't got time to go and get two weeks off to work on that thing. There's no breathing space unless you make a drastic change within a Test. But then you're playing against some very high-quality players in their own conditions. And let's not forget, a lot of people will keep mentioning how you got out!,' Root told the Times of
Furthermore, Root said that a batter must try and make little adjustments to change things. However, the changes come with their own set of pros and cons.'Kohli still got 100 in that first Test (in Perth), which India won. It's all about what you can do to wrestle things back in your favour — whether it's a change of guard or batting out of your crease or in your crease, or to try and create width by staying leg-side of the ball rather than feeling like you've got to make technical changes in that short span. Whenever you make a change, there could be massive pros to it and slight cons to it. You've got to work out if it's worth doing each and every time,' he had been enduring poor form since 2020, having scored just 2028 runs from 39 matches (69 innings) at an average of 30.72 with three hundreds and nine fifties to his name. Since 2024, he has 440 runs to his name from 11 matches (21 innings) at an average of 23.15 with one hundred and one fifty to his to prolonged poor form, his Test average has also taken a massive hit and dropped from 54.97 in 2019 to 46.85. His last Test century came against Australia during the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-15 in Perth, where he scored an unbeaten 100 in a winning Root will be expected to play a huge role for England in the upcoming series against India, being the highest run scorer of the last two World Test Championship (WTC) cycles. The star batter has been on a record-breaking spree over the past one year as he has continued his rapid rise in the lost of leading run scorers in Tests.
