India vs England: through the door

Just before lunch on the first day of the second test, Chepauk witnessed a connoisseur cricket. Moeen Ali kept the coverage area empty, launched a delivery thrown out and induced Virat Kohli to cover drive, his bread and butter shot. The ball flew away, spun sharply after throwing, and went through the door to hit the top of the stump. The captain of India was puzzled to the point of disbelief. He stayed there for a long time despite being offside. Even the referees on the field looked for a reference. But there was no doubt. Kohli fell into the trap and went for a duck.

Kohli came out to bat with a cap, not a helmet. On air, former India hitter Subramaniam Badrinath mentioned that Kohli wearing a cap meant he was unlikely to sweep. Playing the sweep in a field so up and down is fraught with dangers. The batter risks being hit in the face by an upper edge. England captain Joe Root loaded his leg with fielders, minimizing the chances of scoring runs in that area, playing with the turn. For Kohli, who has arguably the best coverage campaign in the business, the vacant offside position was too great a temptation to resist.

Moeen replaced Dom Bess in this test and from England’s perspective it was an improvement, although the 33-year-old was a bit shaky to start his first long-form international match since August 2019.

Kohli hit wonderfully on a difficult pitch in the second inning of Test 1, albeit a lost cause. Also, despite 181 proving grounds (before this game), Moeen is not Graeme Swann. The patron of India backed her strengths, but Moeen came up with a beauty.

The firing brought back memories of Michael Vaughan’s hiatus to Sachin Tendulkar at Trent Bridge in 2002. Vaughan was just a part-time spinner, but it produced a moment of magic against the master hitter – the ball was thrown in the rough and snapped off. to sneak between the bat and the pad and hit the stump. Tendulkar, who hit 92 at the time, looked stunned. “Getting an Indian legend through the door is not as difficult as roulette!” Vaughan tweeted after Kohli’s firing on Saturday.

On Saturday, Moeen became the first spinner to fire Kohli for a duck in test cricket. Overall, it was the 11th time Kohli was left with nothing in the longer format.

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