Nasser Hussain has highlighted Virat Kohli’s ongoing difficulties in the ongoing series against England, with the India captain currently averaging 25 with the bat in the series.

The former England captain, in his column for The Daily Mail, noted the woes affecting Kohli in the ongoing series, adding that the player “has looked more like the 2014 version rather than the one who conquered English conditions and England attack in 2018”.  Kohli endured a difficult tour of England in 2014, when he scored 134 Test runs at an average of 13.40, but came back strongly four years later with 593 runs to finish as the leading run-scorer in a five-Test series.

“Kohli has played at balls he could be leaving, he seems to have that slight technical issue I highlighted in these pages with the positioning of his back foot and he is not picking up the line of Anderson and Robinson,” said Hussain, who in a previous column explained that Kohli’s back foot was pointed towards cover point during his prolific run in 2018; now it seems to have changed in its alignment.  “He did go through a spell on the third day, admittedly against an older ball, where he was leaving it well. But it’s harder to leave the new ball because it swings later, and he was out again on Saturday in a familiar manner.

“Kohli is not sure whether to play or leave and whether to set himself for the inswinger or not. He doesn’t know what to do. It’s high class bowling and it’s not going to get any easier for him.”

The India captain has been dismissed twice by both James Anderson and Ollie Robinson in the series, and fallen to Sam Curran once too – on all occasions he has edged behind to either Jos Buttler behind the stumps or Joe Root in the clip cordon.