Former England cricketer Michael Atherton feels Team India’s new No.4 will be under a lot of pressure because it will not be easy for him to replace Virat Kohli, who recently announced his retirement from Test cricket. The sub-continnet team will tour England for five red-ball games, and with no Rohit Sharma and Virat in the team, the challenge to beat the host nation might break the confidence of the young players. Before Kohli, it was great Sachin Tendulkar, who batted at the No.4 position. Virat and Sachin together added 25,151 runs and scored 81 hundreds in the longest format of the game.
Atherton said that it is not yet confirmed who will bat at No.4 for the visiting Indian team in England.
“India will now start to reshape their Test team with their first series of the new World Test Championship cycle. We are not sure who is going to come in at the No.4 slot, but I am sure he will be under pressure as it is not easy to replace Virat Kohli, who was there for 15 years, and before him it was Sachin Tendulkar,” Atherton said on SKY Sports.
Atherton mentioned that he loved watching Virat Kohli’s batting every day of his 123 Test matches and felt that it was hard not to keep an eye on the batter when he was in full form.
Kohli walked away from red-ball cricket after dominating the format. He took to Instagram to reveal the news a few days after his long-time teammate Rohit Sharma hung up his boots from Test cricket.
Virat scored 9,230 runs at an average of 46.85, with 30 hundreds and 31 half-centuries, and finished as Team India’s fourth-highest run-scorer in the format.
“It was hard to take your eyes off Kohli. I loved watching him bat as he gave everything to Test cricket, and his energy was never on the lower side. His retirement shows that playing Tests was challenging for him,” Atherton added.
Shubman Gill and KL Rahul are the top contenders to bat at No.4. Gill has performed well as an opener and at No.3. Rahul, on the other hand, has batted at different positions.
If the selectots decide to go with someone else then Sarfaraz Khan, Karun Nair and Shreyas Iyer might come into the picture.