The Kohli-Pujara partnership: The great white shark and the camel

Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli

A great white shark is remorseless, relentless and ferocious. All it does is swim and hunt. It does not stop to sleep, pay social calls or enjoy the view. If ever there was a predator that fit the words ‘mission-oriented’ to the tee, this predator is that predator. It is a lean, mean machine that can hunt down anything it chooses to.

A camel is an unassuming sort of animal. It is called the ship of the desert because it can survive in that unforgiving climate for days on end without any food or water. It picks up the slack by ferrying weary travellers to and fro and you never hear it complain.

You wouldn’t consider it probable that these two animals would decide to pool their resources and form a merger, but if India are to have any chance of succeeding in England, that is exactly what must happen. If you are head is in a blur and you are under the assumption that I have had a couple and am talking through my hat, let me assuage those fears. I speak metaphorically of Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara. No prizes for guessing who the great white is in this situation.

The Indian tendency of fishing outside the off-stump

First, a quick lesson on batting in England. According to those connoisseurs of batting; Messrs Crowe and Boycott, footwork is all the rage. Specifically, one must get onto the front foot to counter the swing and zip. Slight trigger movements back and across help counter the moving ball, but there is nothing to beat getting to the pitch of the ball. Batsmen must play as late as possible, avoid playing away from the body and play with soft hands if they are to thrive against the full moving ball. Of the Indian batting line up, Pujara and Kohli are the only two batsmen fully equipped to handle the moving ball.

Shikhar Dhawan has a tendency to play away from his body with hard hands. He pushes at the ball, often pushing it straight to the slips or gully. Murali Vijay has a slight back and across trigger movement that would have him susceptible to the late inswinging delivery. While that does not necessarily mean he will fail, he has recently got into a rut while batting (save one innings in Durban), leaving well, but failing to score.

Rohit Sharma can bat like a dream, but he doesn’t move his front foot nearly enough. Consequently, he is pretty hapless against fast late outswingers (think Dale Steyn in the first ODI of India’s recent tour of South Africa). Ajinkya Rahane has done very well in his Test career so far, but he faces two problems. The first is that he bats too low to shape an innings, the second is his tendency to chase wide deliveries with limited footwork.

MS Dhoni has mastered the art of ODI batting, but in Test matches he feels the need to either walk down the pitch or scythe outside off stump. Even Gautam Gambhir whose inclusion this author has championed, fishes outside off stump way too often. That isn’t to say that all these men will fail, far from it. It just means that if England bowl well early in their innings, they can exploit these flaws and get them out.

Most teams have their best players coming in at number 3 and 4. It is high enough for them to chart their own course and shape an innings, while shielding them from the new ball to a certain extent. The blue-print usually followed is that the number 3 is a stubborn, obdurate, technically correct batsman who can see off the new ball if needed, while being able to build on a platform. He isn’t typically the aggressor, but the unobtrusive leech that gets stuck in and sucks the life out of the opposition bowlers (Ricky Ponting is the exception rather than the rule). The number 4 is the bane of the bowlers’ existence, either stealing the impetus or driving the home the advantage. Pujara’s stonewaller is the perfect foil to Kohli’s strokemaker.

Cheteshwar Pujara is the camel that thrives

Pujara first then, by virtue of his position in the batting order. I compared him to a camel because he thrives in the Gobi Desert that is Test cricket, often picking up the slack of his flashier team-mates. Pujara’s greatest strength is his concentration and unflappable nature. Nothing fazes him. He is technically correct and an excellent judge of where his off-stump is. He gets the bowlers to bowl at him and takes advantage. He gets a good stride in while facing the swinging ball, allowing him to judge whether to leave or play.

He is happy on the back foot too, pouncing on width and nonchalantly getting out of the way of bouncers. That isn’t to say that he can’t score off of them, but he is the sort of chap who will weigh the risk and reward and factor in variables such as the field position before hooking. He plays with the softest of hands so that the ball falls short of the slips on the rare occasion that he is beaten. The best aspect of Pujara’s batting is his ability to rotate the strike, ticking like a well-functioning indicator.

The most distinctive feature of his batting is the whip off his pads for a single. It happens so often that it has become mundane. He isn’t a one-trick pony though; he has an attacking range of strokes. It is just that he chooses to pace himself, a single here, a leave there, an occasional boundary and lo behold he is invariably approaching a landmark. He judges the situation perfectly, and can keep up with the best of them when needed, even outscoring his partner on occasion. In that sense, he is like a gifted driver in a manual car, smoothly going through the gears, accelerating a little, slowing down a little, changing the gears so subtly that you do not notice, and always in control.

Our opening pair does not inspire much confidence, he had better not get too comfortable in the dressing room because chances are that he will be in sooner than later. I believe that he has the skills to counter the moving ball, while not allowing the scoring rate to stagnate, doing so without taking any risks. He has shown an appetite for gargantuan scores in his career so far, and India will need more of the same.

Virat Kohli is the white shark that loves to hunt

The main event then, Virat Kohli. He scored centuries in India’s last two overseas tours and the English bowlers will know that he is gunning for them. While Pujara unobtrusively scores, sort of creeping up on you, Kohli is as overt as they get. Every movement he makes is positive, starting with the saunter and twirl of the bat to the middle. His batting is positive in every sense of the word, right from the first front foot movement.

The most important aspect of his style of play is that he is always looking to score. Some people mistake positive batting for a flurry of boundaries, but there is more to it than that. Singles are like loose change, it doesn’t seem much at first but it gradually accumulates into something substantial. While most batsmen think ‘boundary or block’, Kohli is willing to manipulate the field and push a quick single.

He watches the ball keenly, waiting till the last possible moment before deciding what to do. The margin for error while bowling at him is very small; an overpitched delivery is driven with certainty while a short delivery is hooked with authority. That last part is important; he is one of the few Indian batsmen who looks at the short ball as a legitimate scoring option. In South Africa, Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel tried a bouncer barrage. Lesser men would have quailed a couple of times after seeing the ball so close to their face that they could smell the singeing leather, but the faster they bowled the faster the ball reached the boundary.

Once he is on a role, his batting reeks of arrogance, as if the ball is unworthy to be in his presence longer than the few minutes it takes to dispatch it. He shreds attacks to pieces, but there is a certain cold, calculating clinical ruthlessness to it all. He is like a great white shark on the hunt; you know what is coming but are powerless to stop it. He scores all around the wicket and it would not be overstating it to say that he is India’s most valuable player. He is a match-winner, plain and simple. Perhaps the only criticism that can be levied against him is the fact that he does not press on after reaching a 100. It’ll happen soon enough.

Pujara and Kohli, the perfect pair

The reason this partnership works is that both men are secure in their individuality. Pujara does not try to ravage attacks; he knows his role and is content in it. Similarly, Kohli does not try and grind it out indefinitely; he plays himself in and fights back with all the ferocity of a boxer behind on points in the 9th round. Consequently, their partnerships are not the sort of destructive melee that ends all too quickly, or the sort of partnership that causes the innings to stagnate once it ends due to its scoring rate. It is the best of both worlds, tempering caution and aggression, a juxtaposition of attack and defence.

It is worth noting that while their individual styles differ, they both play with decisive footwork and the straightest of bats. That allows them to transcend the pitch and overhead conditions, focusing solely on the ball. They take the variables out of a situation, stripping each ball down to a single event that must be forgotten about as soon as it ends, irrespective of the outcome. Their batting echoes William Henley’s immortal words, ‘I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.’

It is the perfect storm. It is also the partnership that will most likely shape the innings, for better or for worse. England better get them quickly, by hook or by crook, otherwise things could get bad. Very bad.

And that isn’t a prediction, that’s a spoiler.