Virat Kohli's County Stint: A Timely Move

In the middle of the ongoing IPL, Virat Kohli has secured plans of playing for Surrey to prepare for India’s forthcoming Test tour of England in August this year...

- Bhavesh Bhimani

If there has been one blip in Virat Kohli’s magnificent Test career, it has been his horrible performance in England in the summer of 2014. That series has haunted Kohli in the past few years and has always been used by his critics whenever they want to discuss Kohli the batsman. But four years since that horror show, the Indian superstar is on route to rectify that.

In the middle of the ongoing IPL, Virat Kohli has secured plans of playing for Surrey to prepare for India’s forthcoming Test tour of England in August this year. It will involve playing all formats for close to a month, but Kohli’s main focus is the four-day games he will be playing for the county. While this move would mean that Kohli would have to skip the Test match against Afghanistan in June, it is essential and could make a huge difference before Kohli takes on Anderson and company in the 5-Test series.

Kohli is arguably the world’s best batsman across formats at the present moment. He takes a lot of pride in his game and that series in England must have stung him bad. He averaged 13.40 in the five Tests – 4.75 against James Anderson – and did not go past the score of 40 even once in ten innings. It wasn’t just a failure. It was a massive blotch on Kohli’s aura as a batsman. The swing and seam on the England pitches troubled him and he repeatedly nicked the ball behind by moving away slightly around the off-stump.