'I knocked him over. Virat just let the ball go': Veteran Australia spinner recalls 'most memorable' wicket of Kohli
The 37-year-old Australia spinner recalled how his delivery left Virat Kohli perplexed.
Under Virat Kohli's captaincy, India have lost just three Tests at home, the first one of which took place in 2017. Australia had toured India in early 2017 to play four Tests as part of the Border-Gavaskar trophy. The series was expected to be played on an even keen but in the first match itself, Australia rolled over India by 333 runs. India's unbeaten streak of 19 matches at home had come to a screeching halt as the first match in Pune finished inside 4 days.
India of course recovered from the early onslaught and went on to claim the series 2-1, with victories in the second and fourth Tests in Bengaluru and Dharamsala, the hammering in Pune was something no one saw coming. The star for Australia was left-arm spinner Steve O’Keefe, whose spin ran India ragged on a rank-turned. His identical figures of 6/35 in both innings skittled India for 105 and 107 in the Test as the home team struggled to grapple the spinner in their own conditions.
O'Keefe recalled the Pune Test, remembering one dismissal that he called his 'most memorable' wicket, that of former India captain Virat Kohli. In the first innings, Kohli shouldered arms to a ball he expected to turn away from him. But it held its line and crashed on to the batter's stumps, leaving the then-India captain befuddled and on his way back for a duck.
"My most memorable (wicket) was probably Virat Kohli in India. I knocked him over, we were playing on this absolute dust bowl of a wicket, it was spinning and ragging sideways. It was an absolute tip of a wicket, junk. Ravi Shastri described the wicket of having dermatitis, it was that bad, it had holes in it," O’Keefe said on SEN 1170 The Run Home show.
"To top it off, Virat just lets this ball go, it pitches outside off, and I'm meant to be spinning the ball (away) towards first or second slip. This thing just continued on with the angle, I'm trying to spin it and it's knocked out off-stump so I'm like, 'You beauty!'."
Surprisingly enough, the Indian spinners in that match – the trio of R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Jayant Yadav – could not come anywhere near the success O’Keefe tasted in the match. Ashwin grabbed 7 in the Test, Jadeja 5 and Yadav 2, whereas O’Keefe alone ran away with 12.
"The Indian spinners came out in the first innings and were just spinning it wildly, going to second slip, bouncing off the middle — they were going everywhere. Then I went out and put less revs (on the ball) than the world does a day, and they're just sliding on, I'm just getting LBWs with these non-turners." said O’Keefe.
