It's difficult for a captain to tick every box — and Virat Kohli ticks plenty of them. But, for such a wonderfully attacking player, I’m surprised by how defensive he’s been in the field so far in this series.

India may well win this second Test, but some of his decisions on the fourth afternoon, when England’s openers were fighting hard, were strange.

Don’t get me wrong. Kohli is still young in captaincy terms, and he will get better. He leads by example and wears his heart on his sleeve. I really enjoy the passion he shows out in the middle. But I’ve found him tactically quite naïve.

Virat Kohli has his hands on his head as England's openers frustrated India on day four

It was odd that when England began their second innings, Kohli began with a slip, a gully and two men on the hook for Haseeb Hameed, who almost never plays the hook shot — despite India having a lead of over 400.

On an up-and-down pitch, he had his bowlers operating on one side of the wicket, rather than aiming at the stumps, and he should have had men round the bat early on — not when Alastair Cook and Hameed had been in for 20 or 30 overs.

And why did he not give Ravichandran Ashwin a bowl from the Dr Vizzy End, where he’d had his success in the first innings, until the 42nd over? It just didn’t make sense.

Kohli also changes his field virtually every ball, which is unsettling for his bowlers. If he’s constantly tinkering, it means they think they have to change their plans.

But this pitch in Visakhapatnam hasn’t required anything too out-of-the-box: just hit the wicket, bowl straight, and something will eventually happen. He seems overly worried about runs, which is the modern way. But when the opposition are chasing 405 on a wearing pitch, he really needn’t be.

All these things will improve with time. I just feel he needs to take a step back every now and then and realise he doesn’t have to be involved in absolutely everything.

The India captain signals for a review against England opener Haseeb Hameed

Kohli celebrates with off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin after removing Hameed lbw

He seems to want to be the team’s ball-shiner, the guy who rouses the crowd, and the only one involved in the DRS process.

Look at the way Cook does it: he stays calm and isn’t afraid to use other people, even the juniors, as he showed when Hameed was sure he’d heard a nick from short leg when Stuart Broad got KL Rahul on the third evening.

But none of this should take away from what a good day England had on the fourth day here — regardless of what happens on the fifth.

In the old days, they’d have turned up on the fourth morning and decided that it was only a matter of time before India declared.

But they got all their plans right. They had a seamer at one end and a spinner at the other, and Cook did well to use Adil Rashid — their most threatening slow bowler at the moment — early on.

Broad showed what an exceptional cricketer he’s become in these conditions, using his leg- cutter and his height to exploit the uneven bounce. And there was energy in the field, epitomised by Ben Stokes’s outstanding slip catch to get rid of Kohli.

Kohli scored 81 with the bat as India set England 405 to win the second Test

Alastair Cook scored his slowest Test fifty before he was out lbw to the final ball of the day

Yet none of this would have counted for anything had the openers not gone out and batted the way they did.

Cook didn’t need to prove anything: we know he’s capable of playing that kind of innings. But Hameed showed how well he can read a situation and adapt to it.

Others in the past have taken refuge in the excuse about ‘that’s just the way I play’, but Hameed looks capable of doing more than that.

In Rajkot, on a good pitch, he was more fluent than any of us thought he would be. Here in the fourth innings his job was to survive, to not play too square of the wicket, to get fully forward.

He did all those things, and got hit three times in the process. But just like Mike Atherton, the man who handed him his first Test cap, he gutsed it out. He stared down India’s bowlers and got on with it.

In the end, it took a ridiculous delivery to get him out. He looks some player.