India captain Virat Kohli hasn’t been in the best of forms in Test cricket. The last international hundred that the run-machine hit was back in 2019 when India played a Pink Ball Test against Bangladesh in Kolkata. However, over the past two years, he hasn’t felt the need of sounding an alarm regarding his mode of dismissals.

“We stick to the process but if the mode of dismissal is repetitive then there’s something we need to address. See, it’s about playing 60-70 balls to get a feel for it.

“Sometimes those things happen naturally and sometimes they don’t, but the only constant is that you work hard and trust the process. That shouldn’t waiver because that comes from personal experience,” the skipper, who is now the first Indian player to win 50 matches across each format, said.

“You have to keep an eye on evolving and weed out repetitive mistakes, those need to be ironed out. You have to understand and believe that you can overcome these slumps. That’s the battle, the believing.”

Another cricketer who is on verge of losing his Test spot is Ajinkya Rahane. Commenting on Rahane’s form, the Indian captain said that a slump in form can’t be “judged” by anyone. He said that his Test deputy needs an arm of assurance around his shoulders as he figures out what exactly is “going through”.

He also said that some discussions about team combinations will happen ahead of India’s tour of South Africa later this month.

“I can’t judge his (Rahane’s) form. No one can judge it. Only the individual knows what he’s going through,” Kohli said when asked about Rahane’s poor patch which has resulted in an average of less than 20 across 12 Tests.

For Kohli, it is important that Rahane, for all his good past record, feels secure and the team wouldn’t like to press the panic button just yet.

“We need to back them in these moments, especially when they have done well in the past. We don’t have this environment where we have our players asking ‘what happens now? That’s not how we do it in the side.

Kohli feels that a team can’t react like outsiders, who will praise a player to the moon and back and then rip him apart within a couple of months after a string of low scores.

“We as players know what happens in the team and in our heads. There’s a lot going on outside and we can’t let those things affect the way we play. We support everybody in the side, Ajinkya or anyone.

“We don’t take decisions based on what happens outside,” Kohli made it clear.