It is an exciting journey that India’s Test captain Virat Kohli embarks upon as he leads his troop against Bangladesh in the one-off Test match starting Wednesday. Talking about this ‘special’ moment Kohli said, “It is pretty special. I never thought at 26 I will be captain of the Indian Test side. My only dream as a child was to play Test cricket for India. Over the years I have matured in my mind. The people around me in BCCI and my teammates thought that I was the right guy for the job. I am pretty grateful for that,” Kohli said addressing the media on Tuesday.
“I have some vision in my mind which I have discussed with the team. We are all on the same page. It is pretty exciting for me to start as full-time Test captain and hopefully it is a positive start,” he added.
Shifting focus to the job at disposal, Kohli spoke about team combinations and the playing eleven for the Test. He gave enough hints that he could go in with five bowlers and six batsmen, a kind of team combination that he endorses.
“I certainly believe in giving the team a chance to pick up 20 wickets. I am a big fan of playing five bowlers in a 6-5 combination. You only need two to three batsmen to click to get a score of 500,” he said.
Talking about the team’s preparation, Kohli said: “We only have one Test match so we can afford to push ourselves to the limit. Had it been a three or four-Test series there would be need to save our energy. Right now the priority is to get into game intensity. We are training hard so that guys get into the mindset of the game. You need to build that momentum in practice and the players need to be ready to deliver from ball-one. Today's (Tuesday’s) practice session is going to be a light one but we have pushed ourselves in the last few days,” he said.
Also, Kohli did not stress much on the pitch and the conditions. He believed most players in his side had the experience of playing in similar kind of conditions and it didn’t affect their preparations ahead of the Test match. “Wickets in Bangladesh are similar everywhere. There is no change of soil. Most of the guys have played here last year. We will pretty much know the wicket will play. You don’t really need to practice again and again in places where you have played a lot of cricket. Bangladesh is a place where we have played a lot of cricket. It is not going to make that much of a difference in terms of preparations,” added Kohli.
