xtratime Logo

XtraTime Web Desk - After losing to England horribly in the first test at Chepauk, Indian captain Virat Kohli shared some light on the first test and expects that his team will fight back to seal the series in India's favour.

Ajinkya Rahane has not been in a good form with bat. He scored a hundred in Melbourne and since then, Jinks hasn't been in best of form. He just made one run in his last two innings. When he was facing the heat, Captain Virat backs his deputy saying, “I've said many a times in the past as well, along with Pujara, Ajinkya is our most important test batsman. We believe in his abilities for a long time now and he's an impact player”.

He added, “If you talk about the MCG test, he stood up and scored the hundred when the team needed it the most. There's absolutely no issues. Everyone's playing really well. Just need to be focused a lot more. Victories are earned in any condition whether playing in home or away from home, nothing is given in test cricket”.

The Indian captain also justified why Shahbaz Nadeem was picked ahead of Kuldeep Yadav in the first test. In the press conference, he said, “When you're playing two off spiners, it more or less becomes similar spinner taking the ball away. So, you need variety in the bowling attack. We were clear what combination we wanted to play and there's no regrets whatsoever on that decision. We will think of combinations that bring out variety as a bowling attack. Not just one dimension where the ball is turning just one side. It's important to understand”.

Virat Kohli also went to say that “I don't think anyone batted better than Shubman in this test match". Virat went on to explain why India lost the test match. He said, “The test probably shifted in their favour when we batted in the first innings because we wanted to bat long and I don't think there was enough application by the batting unit. Something we take a lot of pride in”.

He added, “We want to have long partnership. For us, it's trying to win a game of cricket and we need to play solid cricket then we should do that as batsman and as a batting unit we understand that. In future games, it'll be long partnerships and not about 100 as individuals”.