You Need To Physically Condition Yourself Before Test Matches, Says Virat Kohli As India Gears Up For Tests After Long Limited-Overs Assignments
Jul 21, 2017 at 1:06 PM
India might have played 13 Tests at home in the last season but the players will have their task cut out when they take on Sri Lanka in the upcoming Test series after playing only limited-overs cricket in the last five months. In the last home season, Virat Kohli & Co. had played a staggering 13 Tests which was preceded by a four-match Test series in West Indies. However, the players have been away from the longest format of the game for quite some time now and have heavily featured in white-ball cricket.
It all started with the Indian Premier League and was followed by the Champions Trophy and the limited-overs series in West Indies. The cobwebs will be certainly there when the team takes on Sri Lanka in the first Test at Galle from July 26 and captain Virat Kohli has also admitted it. The 28-year old said that playing limited-overs cricket brings down the physical demands and the players need to condition well before the series begins.
“I feel you need to physically condition yourself before Test matches, and then as soon as the game starts, the mental preparation, whatever you’ve done, you can sit down and think about the game. You have to put in the hard yards, thinking if you have to bat for four sessions, five sessions, physically you have to be up there because playing limited-overs cricket, that can drop down because the demands are not that high,” Kohli told reporters on Thursday (July 19).
“Playing short-format cricket, you can still think about Test cricket, but you won’t prepare in that manner because you are not prepared to do so because you don’t have to do so much work. But in Test matches, it’s a different ball game altogether, the way you eat, the way you hydrate, most importantly, the way you practice.
“As a professional cricketer, you have to jump from format to format. But I’m sure the guys who’ve only played Test cricket till February, and who haven’t had so much cricket after that, I’m sure they’ve had long sessions back home. Pujara has played some [county] games, all these guys have been batting for a while, training hard as well. So once the game starts, the groove kicks back in. You just need the game to start and everything falls into place,” he added.