Don’t write off champions: Nathan Lyon on Kohli’s recent batting slump
The Australian team must be hoping to take advantage of Virat Kohli’s prolonged batting slump when the two sides clash in the five-Test series for the Border-Gavaskar trophy
With Indian TV channels showing repeated telecast of old India versus Pakistan World Cup games, cricket broadcaster and writer Harsha Bhogle stated that it was being done to assert that the Indian cricket team never lose.
“I get so many people on my Twitter feed telling me how much they are missing live cricket. Every day on television here they are showing re-runs of every single Pakistan v India World Cup game. It is being shown ball by ball, not just the highlights. They are showing India v Pakistan World Cup games because, on Indian sports news, India never loses,” Bhogle said in an interview to The Guardian.
The experienced cricket panelist was also seen speaking about the management of the Indian teams. He said that even though the demography has changed a lot, the tendency to resect the seniors still prevailed in the Indian dressing rooms.
Advertisement
“Even today, I have not heard Virat Kohli call Sachin, ‘Sachin’. He will call him ‘Paaji’, which means ‘elder brother’. It’s a term of respect. All the younger players coming through now always call Sachin ‘sir’. The coach is always ‘sir’’. He will never be called by his first name. In India, there’s still that respect for age and achievement that will always be around,” the 58-yeara-old.
He added, “Players like Sachin and Rahul knew that young players who were coming into the team wouldn’t come up to them, because they idolised them or had fear. They made a point to go up to the younger players and make them feel at home. A young player coming into the team is wide-eyed. He’s never going to go straight up to a Virat Kohli and say: ‘What do you think?”
Advertisement
