Dinesh Karthik decodes Virat Kohli's failures against spin in Test cricket

Former India captain Virat Kohli has been going through a lean patch in Test cricket over the past three years. The star batter's poor form continued in the first Test against Australia of the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Kohli could only manage to score 12 runs before being dismissed by debutant, Todd Murphy. Now the second Test is set to begin on Friday, February 17, all eyes are on the performance of the Indian batting stalwart. 

With Kohli’s form in vain, veteran Indian wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik has decoded the batter’s failures against spin. Karthik said that at first most of the players in the Indian Test team are more into spin and later their focus will be on playing medium pacers. He also said that he believes that is what happened to Kohli as well.

"When you come in as a young player, as a domestic player you generally tend to play spin a lot better. But once when you make that switch and you move on. You take that forward and get into international cricket, as a batter you consciously focus on playing fast bowling a lot more," Karthik stated.

"So that is one of the reason you see most of the domestic cricketers who come into Indian Test cricket team initially are great players of spin but later on probably it diminishes a bit because they use a lot of their energy and their focus is lot on playing medium pacers. And I'm pretty sure that is the case with Virat Kohli,” Karthik told Cricbuzz.

"You look back at time I'm sure he's a better player of fast bowlers than he started out. Maybe his game against spin has dropped a bit, but that is fine and relatively understandable. You don't play as many spinners when you travel abroad, you don't play so much of good spinners, probably you would end up playing in domestic circuit for longer hours, even if you play in the subcontinent,” he added.

"You can debate about the fact that he doesn't have played well against spin in recent past, but he's a damn good player when it comes to spin bowling, especially fingers spin bowling. The stats do say he's got out to spin so he needs to work on it,” he concluded.

Kohli had gone through a worst phase in his career for a major part of 2022. However, the 34-year-old cricketer regained his form in the 2022 Asia Cup, where he slammed a ton (122* of 61) against Afghanistan. Henceforth, he has gone to hit three ODI hundreds and smashed a match-winning 82* against arch-rivals Pakistan at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground in the ICC T20 World Cup 2022. He is now looking to make a roaring comeback in the Test format as well.