India has ‘Viratball to counter Bazball’: Sunil Gavaskar

Legendary India batter Sunil Gavaskar has backed ‘Viratball’ to counter England’s much talked about ‘Bazball’ approach in the five-Test series, beginning in Hyderabad on January 25.

England have certainly added spice to Test cricket with the way they have played Test cricket since captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum joined hands. By eliminating the fear of failure, the England men’s team have played free-flowing cricket and have not been afraid of taking bold calls even in the toughest situations – an approach that has been labelled Bazball.

However, pundits have labelled the upcoming series in India as the toughest challenge for Ben Stokes’s men as no visiting team has beaten India in a series in India since an Alastair Cook-led side won 2-1 in 2012-13.

India taking on England in the five-match Test series is one of the most anticipated series of the year not only because of the quality of players involved but also “Bazball” cricket England has been playing under skipper Ben Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum.

There have been questions surrounding the England side if they can execute the same style of cricket on turning pitches in India, and the follow-up to that interesting battle is, if they do succeed, how India will respond to it. Former Indian player Sunil Gavaskar said, “We have Viratball to counter Bazball.”

“The way he’s (Virat Kohli) been batting, his movement looks good,” Gavaskar told Star Sports.

Though, Kohli did not make many runs in South Africa with respect to his standards on spicy pitches where there was seam moment and invariable bounce. But he looked a class apart from the other batters and has the amazing ability to score big when he gets a start.

“Yeah, conversion means having more hundreds than fifties. With Kohli, he has a similar amount of hundreds and fifties (Kohli has 29 centuries and 30 half-centuries), which means he has a good conversion rate,” Gavaskar said.

“England have adopted a new approach in Test cricket in the last 1-2 years. It’s an aggressive approach where batters look to attack. They just want to play attacking cricket no matter the situation. It’ll be interesting to see if this approach works against the spinners of India,” Gavaskar further added.

England will start their series in Hyderabad, followed by games in Vishakhapatnam, Rajkot, and Ranchi, and play the final Test in Dharamsala.

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