As Virat Kohli played a fine knock of 89 in the second ODI against Australia, veteran off-spinner Harbhajan Singh cited it as an example to suggest that the captaincy isn't proving a burden and affecting the Indian skipper's game.
The great batsman hasn't been in the best of form in recent times, either for India or Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the IPL, but on Sunday (November 29) he took a giant leap towards revival with an innings reflective of his undoubted quality.
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Kohli, as well as No.5 KL Rahul (78), were key to India responding to Australia's massive 389/6 with a respectable 338/9 of their own.
Harbhajan said Kohli alone can't win India games and that the visiting team need others to also step-up.
“I don’t think Kohli is under any kind of pressure with captaincy, don’t think it’s a burden for him. I think he enjoys those challenges, he is a leader, who leads from the front and sets example for the team to do the needful. For the team to win games," he told India Today.
"I don’t think captaincy is affecting Virat Kohli as it’s obviously one guy cannot win you the game. As I said, even after the World Cup, you know you have Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, standing and taking the team forward and scoring most of the runs."
"It’s good to see KL [Rahul] performing but you need couple of more guys consistently doing well for Team India. So the pressure can shift off a little bit from Virat so that he can bat freely, he can do what he needs and also enjoy the game," Harbhajan added.
But to put India's series loss down to the batting would be grossly unfair with Kohli & co having to bat under enormous pressure of the asking rate in successive outings. The problem is in the bowling as the team have conceded massive scores of 374/6 and 389/4 on two flat pitches at the SCG.
Harbhajan spoke on the failing spin department with leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal not being able to provide the breakthroughs expected of him in the middle-overs.
“Well, I think I need to walk out on the park to get Steve Smith out,” Harbhajan said. "I would like to see Smith batting against spinners. You know, Yuzvendra Chahal or maybe Kuldeep Yadav coming in, in the side. They both bowling in tandem and bowl 7-8 overs of spin when Smith comes in."
"Steve Smith is someone who likes pace on the bat, if you take that away from him for some time that might be the key point to get him out."
“I don’t see anything wrong going with Chahal. It’s the conditions, it’s purely the different conditions what they get in Australia and what they were getting in UAE. In UAE, pitches were conducive to spin bowling as opposed to Australia where it’s always been a hard place for spinners to bowl."
"It’s just as Virat said, Australians know their wicket better than others and they are taking their chances against him [Chahal]. So my advice to Chahal would be to keep working harder on his game and bowl a little bit slower in the air if possible and you might see some turn on the wicket," added the 'turbanator' in a simple piece of advice for the shrewd leg-spinner.
