Virat Kohli, the India captain who almost single-handedly helped India record decent totals in the first Test at Edgbaston, which India lost by 31 runs, faltered at Lord’s with returns of 23 and 17 as India scored 107 and 130.

It was abject, and with the third of five Tests coming up on August 18 at Trent Bridge, Kohli has reached out to fans of the Indian team with a short but straightforward message on Facebook: “Sometimes we win and other times we learn. You never give up on us and we promise to never give up on you either. Onwards and upwards.”

Basically, keep the faith.

That’s easier said than done for many, seeing that while the bowling was excellent in Birmingham, it wasn’t so at Lord’s, and the batting has largely been a failure.

[caption id=”attachment_78099″ align=”alignnone” width=”800″]""="" width="768px" height="432px" srcset="" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px"> “You never give up on us and we promise to never give up on you either”[/caption]

Take out Kohli (240 runs in four innings), and Hardik Pandya (90) and Ravichandran Ashwin (85) are the only ones with runs of any significance against their names. Murali Vijay, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul and Dinesh Karthik, the frontline batsmen who have played both Tests, haven’t done anything of note, while Shikhar Dhawan, who played the first Test, and Cheteshwar Pujara, brought in for the second, haven’t tasted success either.

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“We have to accept the mistakes, learn from them, put them aside, make sure we’re not thinking about the same mistakes again, rather get confident and not repeat those again,” said Kohli after the Lord’s Test but, again, that’s easier said than done against a rampaging England pace attack fronted by the indefatigable James Anderson.