'Steve Smith way better than Kohli' - Twitter lashes out at Virat Kohli for his poor outing in New Zealand

Team India started Day 3 of the First Test match of the ongoing two-match Test series on a not so positive note. While combined efforts of Ishant Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Ravichandran Ashwin, led to New Zealand team getting all-out, but their batsmen had managed to score 348 runs, leaving India trailing behind by 183 runs.

When the Indians came in to bat, one of the two openers, Prithvi Shaw, caught by Tom Latham, off of a Trent Boult delivery. The next batsman to walk in was Cheteshwar Pujara, who along with the opener, Mayank Agarwal, managed to stitch together a partnership of 51 runs, taking the team’s score to 78 runs. But, Boult struck again and knocked off the stumps of Pujara, who walked out with a score of 11 runs off 81 deliveries to his name.

The man that walked in next, the captain of the team, Virat Kohli, had the responsibility to stabilize team India’s inning and get them to a decent score, by playing a long haul inning. But, disappointment struck the Indian camp, when he was dismissed cheaply for the second time in this match. Kohli has not been in the pink of his form in international cricket, in the last couple of months with the bat and it was evident in the way he was dismissed.

Trying to play a pull shot to a Trent Boult bouncer, Kohli missed the shot and nicked the ball. It landed safely in the hands of the wicketkeeper, BJ Watling and Kohli was seen walking back to the pavilion dejected, after scoring just 19 runs off 43 deliveries, at a time when his team was struggling to get the flow of runs going and get to a lead, putting up a decent score for the in-form New Zealand batsmen to chase.

Kohli in his last 10 international innings hasn’t been able to cross the 100 run mark even once, which by any other standards, might not be that bad. But the batsman that Kohli has come to be in the recent years, it is a pretty long dry stretch for a batsman of his stature. His Highest score in these 10 matches was 89 runs, which he had scored in an ODI against Australia in Bengaluru.

Here’s how Twitter reacted to Virat Kohli’s poor form