LONDON: There is hardly anyone in current India team, who works on his own batting harder than Virat Kohli.
He has encountered technical problems outside the off- stump and perhaps that’s one of the reasons he opted for throwdowns against red duke ball, an effort to counter swing.
It was an out of the box training session for Kohli, who walked first into the nets.
He walked into the middle net where fielding coach R Sridhar, throwdown expert Raghavendra and batting coach Sanjay Bangar were giving throwdown.
It was seen that Bangar was giving throwdowns with a red ball dukes used for Test matches.
It’s not a normal sight to see batsmen taking red ball throwdowns before ODIs.
The logic behind taking red ball throwdown is that it will deviate in air throwing various challenges. Kohli was seen tackling incoming and outgoing deliveries along with extra bounce.
The white ball doesn’t swing much and if one wants to practice batting against swing bowling, one needs to have a few hits against the red ball.
Sridhar and Raghavendra however gave throwdowns with white ball.
After 25 minutes of throwdown, Virat then faced Umesh Yadav at paper’s nets followed by a short session against spinners. Yuvraj Singh rolled his arm over and got one to bounce from the spot. Yuvi had a wry smile and Kohli was seen telling him, “Match pe paata hoga (It will be a flat deck for the match)”.
Anil Kumble devoted his maximum time behind Ashwin keeping a close tab on his bowling.
Later he was seen helping Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya with spot bowling which would enable him to hit the right length.
Last but not least, during the whole course of time, both captain and coach were not seen interacting with each other.
It could be purely coincidental that Kumble came back to spinners nets some 15 minutes after Kohli left the nets having taken a second round of throwdown from Bangar this time with white ball. (AGENCIES)
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