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James Anderson was involved in a number of verbal exchanges with Virat Kohli in Test matches but he said he avoided doing the same against Sachin Tendulkar. (Express Archive/Reuters)
James Anderson played India in 39 of the whopping 188 Tests that he played in his illustrious career. He thus has enough experience to bowling to both Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli and has said that facing them were two almost entirely different experiences. Anderson dismissed Tendulkar nine times in his Test career and Kohli fell seven times to him.
“I had some success early against Kohli, the first time he came to England in 2014. I really exploited his weakness of outside off-stump, and then the next time I played against him – he had obviously gone back and worked on that – he was totally a different player. He really had taken his game to a different level, made it very difficult for not just me but for bowlers in general. I got him out 4-5 times in the first series and then didn’t get him out in the next I played against him,” Anderson told talkSPORT podcast.
The former England bowler, who is currently placed third on the world’s leading Test wicket-taker list with 704 wickets, has termed experiencing a “shift in dominance” against Kohli, something he didn’t feel against Tendulkar. Anderson had dismissed Kohli four times in the latter’s first Test tour of England of England in 2014. “Against Sachin, for example, I didn’t feel like there was that sort of shift in dominance. With Kohli, there was definitely a shift. Found him a very difficult player to bowl at because he had that steely mindset, wanting to get into a battle. He’s very competitive and after that initial success, it was very difficult to bowl against.” Anderson added.
Kohli would famously score just 134 runs at an average of just 13.50 in five Tests during the 2014 tour and this blip is made even more extraordinary by the bumper series Kohli enjoyed the next time he toured England in 2018. He amassed 593 runs with an average of 59.30 in five Tests including a century each at Birmingham and Nottingham. While Anderson was the leading wicket-taker in the series, which England won 4-1, Kohli never fell to the veteran.
The last time Anderson removed Kohli in a Test match was in the third Test during India’s 2021 tour of England. Prior to that, Kohli had a verbal altercation with Anderson on the fourth day of the second Test match at Lord’s. Anderson recalled how Kohli was more expressive than Tendulkar. “Kohli was a slightly different character than Sachin. Sachin was very mild, mannered; very calm at the crease. Virat was more expressive with his emotions. Wore them on his sleeves and you can kind of see it. In his captaincy, when he celebrated his wickets. I tried as much as I could to get that feeling out of the equation and just try to think of him as a batter and not too much about who it was. It was difficult at times; we had many battles on the field,” said Anderson.
The former England bowler also talked about how he tried avoiding verbal battles with Tendulkar. “I definitely had more verbal battles with Virat than with Sachin. With Sachin I tried not to. He was certainly at a different stage in his career when I played against him. He had this sort of God-like presence, and how he was held in India. It was incredible how the fans treated him and looked up to him. But as Virat’s career went on, that became more and more like that for him. But at the start of his career, it wasn’t quite intimidating,” concluded Anderson.
English (US) ·