Mohammad Kaif pinpoints reason for Virat Kohli's LBW dismissal against Jofra Archer in England vs India 1st ODI
Mohammad Kaif pinpoints reason for Virat Kohli’s LBW dismissal against Jofra Archer in England vs India 1st ODI originally appeared on Cricket News.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Virat Kohli was dismissed LBW by Jofra Archer in the first ODI against England.
- Kohli scored five runs off six balls at Edgbaston.
- Mohammad Kaif blamed a lack of continuous cricket for the dismissal.
- Kohli has now been LBW four times against seamers since January 2023.
Mohammad Kaif explains lack of games and rhythm as reason for Virat Kohli’s LBW dismissal
India’s chase of 259 at Edgbaston began in the worst possible fashion. Rohit Sharma laboured to 11 from 21 balls before edging Sam Curran to Harry Brook, and within an over the tourists had lost their second and far more valuable wicket.
Virat Kohli, returning to international cricket for the first time since a hamstring injury sustained in the IPL 2026 final, lasted just six deliveries. Jofra Archer speared in a full ball and trapped him plumb in front, sending the veteran back for five.
Virat Kohli = GONE! ❌ pic.twitter.com/OoYriwqcYl
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) July 14, 2026
The dismissal has drawn scrutiny for a reason. Kohli has now been given out lbw to seamers four times since January 2023, an unusual pattern for a batter whose leg-side play has always been among the most reliable strengths of his game.
In terms of numbers, Kohli was dismissed only once in that manner between 2013 and 2023. His only LBW dismissal during that period being from the 2019 World Cup semifinal against Trent Boult.
Kaif blames a lack of continuous cricket
Speaking on Cricbuzz, host Tanya Purohit put that statistic directly to Mohammad Kaif, asking whether the recurrence of such dismissals against seam bowling now represents a genuine concern for the 37-year-old.
Kaif immediately rejected the idea of a technical flaw, framing the problem as one of rhythm rather than method. “Look, he gets out very rarely, like he got out today. Yes, they do get out, but very rarely,” the former India batter said.
He located the cause squarely in Kohli’s fractured schedule. “The reason he does is that when you don’t play matches consistently,” Kaif explained. “I can understand that after playing IPL, he will have a break, and his conditions are different. When you are not in rhythm continuously, then the preparation of your legs in the back and across movement takes some time.”
The Archer set-up that undid Kohli
Kaif then walked through the sequence itself, arguing Archer had constructed the wicket cleverly and that Kohli’s usual strength against that length became, briefly, his undoing.
“If you look before that ball, Archer bowled a short ball to him. It was a bouncer. Then he bowled a full ball. So sometimes when you don’t play continuously, you don’t get the rhythm.”
“Then he hits a four on this ball. His favourite ball was on the legside,” Kaif added.
He stressed how uncharacteristic the mode of dismissal remains. “LBWs are very rare. He always scores runs on that ball, uses wrists, the bottom hand comes into play,” Kaif said, before returning to the absence of match practice as the root cause.
“But because this is the first match of the series and he hasn’t played matches continuously since IPL, he also missed the match on the Afghanistan tour, when he came home,” he added.
“So because of this, I feel that sometimes in the initial stages, this straight ball, which was a full ball, he read it and came on a little but he misses it and plays it across the line. This happens very rarely, but it has happened when Virat Kohli starts his innings. He gets trapped early on many times.”
The Cricket News Opinion: A defence that only partly holds
Kaif’s diagnosis is reasonable as far as it goes. Kohli genuinely has not played competitive cricket since the IPL final, missed the Afghanistan series through injury, and English conditions demand a recalibration that no amount of net practice fully replicates.
The wrinkle is that Kaif’s own explanation identifies a structural problem rather than dismissing one. If Kohli is vulnerable at the start of every series because he no longer plays continuously, that vulnerability will follow him into knockout matches in South Africa next year.
Four lbw dismissals to seam in three years is hardly a collapse, and Kohli remains the second-highest run-scorer among overseas batters in England. But India’s chase is now under real pressure, and the men brought back to steady it have contributed 16 runs between them.
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