'Exploited his weakness...' - James Anderson Opens Up on Bowling to Virat Kohli

James Anderson, a former fast bowler for the England cricket team, talked candidly about bowling to two of India's contemporary greats, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli. During his career, Anderson, the most successful fast bowler in Test cricket history, got rid of Virat seven times and Sachin nine times. Anderson chose Virat over Sachin when asked who was the hardest batter to bowl to.  

Despite dominating Virat in their first encounter in 2014, Anderson clarified that the Indian hitter recovered and went on to have a strong record against the pacer. However, there was never a significant "shift in dominance", and Sachin and he did not have such a heated argument.

Particularly following the England series in 2014, Anderson's arguments with Kohli attracted a lot of attention. The right-handed hitter, who was still making a name for himself as a Test player at the time, had a lacklustre showing, scoring only 134 runs in five Test matches. In that series alone, Anderson dismissed the Indian batsman four times by exposing and exploiting the weakness of edging deliveries outside off stump.

James Anderson gets candid:

James got candid during TalkSport Podcast, saying, "I had some success early against Kohli the first time he came to England (2014). I really exploited his weakness outside off stump, and then the next time I played against him (in 2018), he had obviously gone away and worked on that — it was like bowling to a different player. He’d taken his game to a different level. He made it very difficult, not just for me, but for bowlers in general. I think I got him out four or five times in the first series, and then I didn’t get him out in the next series at all"

When discussing Sachin Tendulkar, however, the quick bowler had a different perspective. The Little Master was already a world-renowned figure when Anderson first encountered him. He said, "Against Sachin, for example, I didn’t feel like there was that sort of shift in dominance. With Kohli, there definitely was, and I found him a really difficult player to bowl at because he also had that steely mindset."

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