Virat Kohli trains with red ball to counter swing challenge

Virat Kohli’s technical difficulty against swing outside the off-stump is known to all. His last dismissal where he was dismissed for a duck against Sri Lanka was not particularly a repetition of the same problem, but a knick in an attempt to guide an outside off delivery to the third man which ended up finding the wicket-keeper.

In an attempt to counter that problem, Kohli was seen practicing with a red ball instead of a white Kookaburra ahead of their must-win clash against South Africa. In an out of the box training session for Kohli, who walked first into the nets, he opted for throwdowns against red Duke ball, an effort to counter swing.

The logic behind taking red ball throwdowns before an ODI is that it deviates more in the air as compared to the white ball. Kohli was seen tackling incoming and outgoing deliveries along with extra bounce, as reported by Times of India. Kohli had been practicing with the red ball in the previous practice sessions as well.

He walked into the middle net where fielding coach R Sridhar, throwdown expert Raghavendra and batting coach Sanjay Bangar were giving throwdowns. It was seen that Bangar was giving throwdowns with a red ball Dukes used for Test matches. After 25 minutes of throwdowns, the skipper then faced Umesh Yadav at paper’s nets followed by a short session against spinners. Yuvraj Singh, who did not bowl in the previous match, rolled his arm over and got one to bounce from the spot.

Ashwin set to play tomorrow?

Though Ashwin was seen practicing before the encounter against Sri Lanka as well, we can take a hint that he could finally be featuring in the Playing XI tomorrow because Anil Kumble devoted his maximum time behind Ashwin keeping a close tab on his bowling.

Since this is a virtual quarter-final, Kohli would like to bank on Ashwin’s skills to exploit South Africa’s weakness against spin. Later, the Head Coach was seen helping Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya with spot bowling which would enable him to hit the right length.