The Indian team was given a harsh reality check by England in the first Test at Rajkot. With around 50 overs left on the final day and the hosts needing 310 runs for an improbable victory, a draw was looking like a likely result. However, a disciplined bowling performance from the English bowlers saw the Indian team losing six wickets in no time and Virat Kohli’s men were in danger of losing the first Test. But Kohli stood firm at the other end and ensured a draw for his team.
With the team doing really well in the last one year or so, it was widely speculated that the Indian team will easily defeat the visitors. But the match did not go as expected and it was the Indian team which had to fight hard to save the match. However, Kohli said that the match was a good opportunity for his players to learn how to draw a game.
Speaking to the media after the end of the match, Kohli said: Well, at least we know how to draw games now. Before that, some people obviously were skeptical about our side knowing how to draw games. We either won games or we lost games. This was the thing I spoke with (Ravindra) Jadeja out there as well, that it was an opportunity for both of us to improve on another aspect of the game. Maybe in Test cricket in the future, we will have this situation again. Maybe we will have to apply ourselves again and show character, so have intent… to get runs in between but play percentage cricket, figure out areas where you want to take ones or hit boundaries but at the same time, be sure of your defence as well. So, it was a challenging situation but one that we countered really well, I thought.”
Barring one or two sessions, Alastair Cook’s men have undoubtedly dominated the match. The visiting batsmen played the Indian spinners with utmost ease and their bowlers especially the spinners created all sort of problems for the Indian batsmen. When asked whether India played the catch-up game throughout the five days, Kohli said:“Depends on how you look at it. We looked at it as an opportunity for us to know how to play in these situations. The best learning is in the game. You can practice all you want in the nets but once you know how to make runs is when you understand how they are done. And, similar to a situation when you are put under pressure, if you bat out the innings, if you play a draw, then you understand as a team when you need to switch gears and trust your defense and slow the game down.”
“Those things are very important to learn as a Test side if you have to be consistent over a period of time and not just a shot in the dark. We took the opportunity and that’s why you saw [Ravichandran] Ashwin and Jadeja applying themselves really well. Otherwise, it would have been a lot more panic if you did not look forward to the situation. It is very important to want to be there,” he added.
When asked about the team’s decision to play five bowlers with three spinners on a pitch that had a little help for the spinners, the Delhi batsman said that he was surprised to see the grass on the pitch. However, he said that the form of R Ashwin and Wriddhiman Saha gave them the confidence to pick five bowlers in the side and insisted that his team would continue it to put more pressure on the opposition.
I was quite surprised to see that much grass, to be honest. It should not have been the case. Secondly, I thought Ashwin was batting really well, he has scored a lot of runs for us this year, so has [Wriddhiman] Saha. Those two are confident. Plus [it is] Jadeja’s home ground, so we backed him to get a few runs for us. That gave an opportunity to play [Amit] Mishra, an extra spinner. So at least, we had all our bases covered. With five batsmen, we ended up getting close to 500. And even batted out the second innings as well. Again, it gives us belief as a batting unit. So, going ahead, we can still play an extra bowling option and keep putting pressure on the opposition. It was something you can look forward to or feel that you don’t have an extra batsman and go into a negative mindset. I think the guys applied themselves very well,” he said.
Commenting on the pitch, he said:“We saw from day three onwards, the last hour, the ball did quite a bit for the spinners. That stayed consistent on Days 3, 4 and 5. I don’t think it was similar throughout the day. The oddball bounced in between and you had to pitch the ball in the right areas as spinners to get the purchase from day three onwards. The first two days were really good to bat on. Day three onwards, it slowed down a little bit but no demons as such. Sometimes, the situation becomes such that even on flat wickets, you tend to make mistakes. It looks that it is doing a lot more than it is actually out there. And, someone who is out there playing will understand how much the ball was doing. Because I spent decent time out there and I knew that it is because we lost four-five wickets that it looks like it’s going to rip through from a good length area. That was not the case. The wicket was pretty decent throughout the game.”
The English spinners took 13 wickets in the match compared to their Indian counterparts who could pick only 9. When Kohli was asked whether the visiting spinners had outshone his spinners, he said:“I don’t think so. They bowled well but it’s not that they outperformed our spinners. It’s not that they took five-fors and totally turned around the game. They should have won the game if they outperformed our spinners.”
When asked about his batsmen’s approach of keeping the scoreboard ticking despite losing wickets at regular intervals in the second innings, he said:“In these situations it’s very important, as I said, when things get heated out there, when there’s a lot of pressure on the batsman, it’s very important to have the intent of scoring runs. Because as an opposition you know that the ball is going to go to the boundary as well, you got to take more time to recover it. The bowlers panic, the opposition panics, the captain panics. At the same time, the score keeps ticking as well. So that was the whole idea – to have the intent to score runs also, because that way you’re looking forward to playing the ball, you’re nicely on top of the ball, your head is on top of the ball. If you’re only looking to defend, sometimes your weight can be back and if the ball is turning even a little bit, the close in fielders come into play. So it was very important to keep intent onto the ball to control it better with your hands. That was the whole idea about being a bit positive as well.”