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LONDON: While those he has led as Test captain for more than three years play a historic game in Bangalore, Virat Kohli will be half a world away, preparing for a County Championship game in Surrey’s colors, against Somerset.
The ground in Guildford can hold 4,500 spectators, and even if half as many turn up to watch one of world cricket’s marquee names, that attendance will still be dwarfed by the crowd that will be watching India against Afghanistan in their inaugural Test.
Since he took over from MS Dhoni as Test skipper in 2015, Kohli has missed just one game, against Australia in Dharamsala back in March 2017 because of a shoulder injury. It is only now, a few months short of his 30th birthday, that the world’s finest all-format batsman has started skipping the odd limited-overs assignment to keep fatigue at bay.
To understand why he would choose three county championship games over a Test against the sport’s Cinderella side, you have to leaf through the recent chapters of Indian cricket history. For four decades, since Bhagwat Chandrasekhar’s 6 for 38 inspired a thrilling victory at The Oval in the summer of 1971, tours of England were generally happy affairs.
There was the 3-0 drubbing in 1974, when India were skittled out for 42 at Lord’s, but that aside, most of the contests were closely fought. India won in 1986 (2-0) and 2007 (1-0) and drew in 2002 (1-1). In 29 Tests across four decades, they won five and lost eight.
It helped that before and after the summer of “Mill Reef” — Chandra’s unplayable quick delivery named after the Epsom Derby winner — many of their players did their time on the English county circuit and became familiar with the conditions. Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, even after he tragically lost an eye in a road accident, has pride of place in Sussex lore. Farokh Engineer, the dashing wicketkeeper-batsman, became a local hero at Lancashire, while Bishan Singh Bedi was a Northamptonshire stalwart until his assertion that John Lever used Vaseline strips to tamper with the ball on the tour of India in 1976-77 soured the relationship.
Sunil Gavaskar, whose epic 221 nearly led India to a famous victory at The Oval in 1979, spent the following summer with Somerset. Kapil Dev had a stint with Northants, and Ravi Shastri — the current coach — with Glamorgan. In 1992, Sachin Tendulkar, then just 19, became the first overseas professional to play for Yorkshire.
There were others too. Mohammad Azharuddin, whose batting so charmed the English in 1990, played for Derbyshire in subsequent seasons. In 2000, it was Rahul Dravid’s stint at Kent that partly paved the way for John Wright to become India’s first foreign coach. And toward the end of his career, VVS Laxman played 18 games for Lancashire.
But with the advent of the Indian Premier League in 2008, the exodus to England to play either the county championship or league cricket — both Vinoo Mankad (1952) and Madan Lal (1986) were called up from their clubs to play for the national team — slowed to a trickle.
The early, cold part of the summer, when batting conditions tend to be most tricky, now clashes with the IPL.
The impact of that lack of familiarity has been seen on the pitch in the last two tours. Fatigue was a mitigating factor in 2011 when India were routed 4-0 — even players that begged for breaks during the IPL were not given them — but there were no such excuses when Alastair Cook’s side came from 1-0 down to win 3-1 in 2014. Kohli finished that series with 134 from 10 innings, and faced criticism that he could not handle quality swing-and-seam bowling.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has already said that it will make every effort to get the long-form specialists over to England in June, soon after the Afghanistan game, even though the Test series starts at the beginning of August. Kohli, whose preparation and attention to detail are second to none, is just going that extra yard.
Away from the media scrutiny he loathes — though you can rest assured half a dozen Indian TV channels, at least, will shadow his every move — Kohli will hope that Hampshire, Somerset and Yorkshire play their strongest sides. Having made five Test centuries in Australia, and two magnificent tons in South Africa, he is steeling himself to erase the one question mark against his formidable name.