If Kohli and Co really believe they don’t need to be coached in technique, that’s a concern

“What do you think Indian batting needs to do to succeed in Australia?”

Pose that question to Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri, and you could get ready to play bingo these days.

Character? Check. Positive intent? Check. Mental strength? Check. Focus on the next delivery? Check.

Some version of the aforementioned aspects will invariably be the response we are likely to hear.

It wasn’t too different before India’s departure for Australia, the final leg of what was supposed to be a defining period for this Indian team under the leadership of Kohli and Shastri.

Over to the Indian captain, then.

“To be honest, we all felt there was not much that went wrong. Whatever was not right was very extreme also. We played good cricket, but the mistakes were also very extreme, that’s why we lost that many number of games rather than wining those moments and winning the games.

“Individuals need to take more responsibility, show more character in such situations and assess it, and then find a solution rather than thinking that the solution will appear from somewhere.”

— Virat Kohli

You read that once and felt the responses were honest and forthright? Read that again, and carefully, and ask yourself: what did we actually learn from those lines?

And now, over to Ravi Shastri on what India’s approach will be like.

“Nothing will change, it is just seizing those moments, getting tough mentally, when the going gets tough. That’s where we have erred, we have learnt our lessons. If we are tough mentally, we will do better.”    

— Ravi Shastri

To be fair to them, it’s a great example of saying a whole lot in a press conference without it meaning too much. It’s an art not entirely uncommon, around the globe, across sports.

Having said that, the lack of acknowledgment of one particular issue in these press conferences is glaring: technical flaws.

Technical aspect

It was evident over the first couple of Test matches in South Africa, it was evident pretty much throughout the five matches in England, that technically this Indian team is not the most adept in Test cricket, except for the captain of course.

While Kohli went from strength to strength over the period of these two challenging Indian tours, the same cannot be said for anyone else in that batting lineup. Ajinkya Rahane showed flashes of being decent (the final Test in South Africa, and a couple of fighting innings in England), so did Cheteshwar Pujara.

But the number of times the Indian batsmen were dismissed because their footwork was wrong, or there was a gap between bat and pad when there shouldn’t be any or they went chasing at the first sight of a full ball outside off-stump – all those indicate a lack of technical aptitude to succeed in foreign conditions in red-ball cricket.

Sunil Gavaskar, a master of batting technique, broke down India’s performance in the first two Tests in England thus:

“The more you leave balls in Tests, the better for you, because the bowler tires. And if you keep leaving balls outside off, you will force the bowler to change his line. Virat made that adjustment, the others didn’t. See Shikhar Dhawan’s dismissals in both innings, Rahul in the first innings, Ajinkya Rahane in both innings - they all went at the ball with hard hands. The secret to batting in England is not to reach for the ball, but let it come on to the bat.”

So when Kohli says the Indian team sat down and discussed the shortcomings, the first question that comes up is this: where is this kind of critique coming from? Despite calls for review of the results in England, it doesn’t really look like anything official went down. If all that was being discussed during these team reviews that Kohli referred to is about ‘seizing the moment’, ‘backing yourself mentally’, ‘sticking it out till a solution appears’ – any real scope for improvement is hard to foresee.

This is not to say that technical corrections are not being done behind the scenes. There is after all a full-time batting coach who travels with the team in Sanjay Bangar. For instance, Hanuma Vihari spoke about batting with ramps in the nets to accommodate for bounce in preparation for Australia. Fair enough.

But after seven Tests in South Africa and England that did not do his reputation too much good, you are left to wonder where the change is going to come from Down Under. This might not be the toughest Australia side that India will face, given the absence of the banned Steve Smith and David Warner, but their bowling unit will still be a handful on pitches that offer pace and bounce.

And you only have to listen to Kohli’s defence of Shastri to understand where this problem comes from. Questioned of the head coach’s role, Kohli said:

 “A lot of people think we don’t understand the game enough and what needs to be done, that someone needs to literally tell us where the bat has to come from, where the head has to be but I think we have learned those things enough”  

Even the great Sachin Tendulkar had the urge to tweak his batting routines in nets or eliminate a shot from his game completely when he thought he needed something extra to succeed. The best batsmen don’t ever think there is nothing to improve in their game technically and as great a man-manager Shastri can be, if the team really believes they don’t need to be told ‘where the bat has to come from, and where the head has to be’, then there is an issue.

For the sake of Indian cricket, you really hope Kohli wasn’t being 100% serious when he said those words. India’s success in Australia cannot be just down to mental strength and character – it will have a lot to do with their technical skills.