The legendary England fast bowler James Anderson has revealed that Virat Kohli’s sledging to Jonny Bairstow in the Edgbaston test match indeed riled up the England middle-order batsman.
James Anderson, who appeared on the “Tailenders” podcast of a BBC test match special, said that Jonny Bairstow is not the type of character whom you want to be sledging because he gets riled up quickly and it doesn’t result well for the opposition.
Anderson further added that he doesn’t know how many people noted the difference in the strike rates of Bairstow before and after being sledged, but he reckons that he was probably batting at a strike rate of 20 before being sledged and once the sledging started, his strike rate sky-rocketed to 150.
According to Anderson, when Jonny Bairstow came back to the England dressing room during the lunch break on day 3, he was already batting on 80 and he told his teammates, “When will they learn to shut it?”
Jonny Bairstow was miffed with the sledging that was directed toward him in the first session of day 3
Jonny Bairstow was clearly miffed with all the sledging that was directed towards him and Anderson is of the view that it probably helped him get going because he was struggling before that.
Virat Kohli went ahead with his sledging during the second innings of England as well, but the sledging during the second innings was not as intense as it was during the first innings and hardly any sledging during the second innings was directed towards Bairstow.
Jonny Bairstow has been rested for the ongoing T20I series between India and England, but he will come across Virat Kohli again in the ODI series which will take place straight after the T20I series. It will be interesting to see if Virat refrains from sledging during the ODIs or continues with it.
