Birmingham,
\nEngland pacer James Anderson says Virat Kohli is not \u201cinvincible\u201d and poor slip fielding from his team mates has allowed the Indian skipper to get off the hook in the first innings of the opening cricket Test here.<\/p>\n
It was an engrossing duel between Test cricket\u2019s second most successful pacer, Anderson and Kohli on the second day when the Indian skipper was dropped twice off the bowler on 21 and 51 by Dawid Malan.<\/p>\n
Kohli went on to score 149 and was batting on 43 not out in India\u2019s second innings score of 110 for 5 with the visitors still needing 84 more to win first Test. Anderson rued his side\u2019s poor catching and said England need to take their chances against a batsman of Kohli\u2019s calibre.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been encouraged the way I\u2019ve bowled at him in this game so far, found the edge a few times in the first innings. On another day I could have got him for 20, and then we\u2019re not talking about how brilliant he is,\u201d Anderson said last night.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t drop Virat Kohli on 21, because he\u2019s one of the best players in the world, and he\u2019ll capitalise on that and which he did. We could have been in a much different position now. We\u2019ve just got to go away and know we can get him. No one is invincible in world cricket. We can get him out,\u201d he said. Anderson said that Kohli can shield his tail very well, like he did in the first innings, and thus England need to find a way to quickly get him out if the hosts desire to win the Test.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be a part of it is great, and tomorrow we\u2019ve got a really good chance of winning the game. If we recover well and come back fresh in the morning, we know it\u2019s going to be 25-30 overs max one way or the other, so we can give it all we can,\u201d said Anderson.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he (Kohli) bats like he did in the first innings India will win. Even batting with the tail, he just managed to find the gap, or get down the other end – the way he batted with the tail was brilliant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need five wickets, simple as that, fairly quickly – otherwise, they\u2019ll get the runs. We\u2019ve just got to give it everything we\u2019ve got for the first 15-20 overs – leave absolutely nothing out there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Anderson said the ongoing match was a brilliant example for Test cricket.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been really exciting, if not a bit frustrating at times. What\u2019s been great is the way the momentum has shifted. Test cricket at its best \u2013 the way we dominated the first two sessions of the match, then India wrestled back the momentum, then it was our job to go out and bowl well. It\u2019s gone to and fro,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a really exciting place to be, because you know we could do something special tomorrow by winning this \u2013 such a close Test match. So we\u2019ll go to bed dreaming about getting Kohli out first thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The hosts have dropped quite a few chances in the slips, and their record is only marginally better than India\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Anderson said this was a matter of concern as slip catching is an area where they have struggled for quite some time now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe personnel in the team have changed quite a lot, so it\u2019s been difficult to get a set cordon. But we\u2019re just going to have to keep working harder and harder, pushing ourselves to be better, because you can\u2019t keep creating the chances and not taking them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Anderson was also full or praise for young Sam Curran, who brought England back into the game with a maiden Test half-century after they were reduced to 87 for 7 in the second innings at one stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Birmingham, England pacer James Anderson says Virat Kohli is not \u201cinvincible\u201d and poor slip fielding from his team mates has allowed the Indian skipper to get off the hook in the first innings of the opening cricket Test here. It was an engrossing duel between Test cricket\u2019s second most successful pacer, Anderson and Kohli on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38337,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38338,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38336\/revisions\/38338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}