Always in the favour of playing five bowlers: Virat Kohli

Virat Kohli has declared that his side will be looking forward to playing “attacking cricket” and he is in favour of playing 5 specialist bowlers in the side.

“I am always in the favour of playing five bowlers because if we play more batsmen, you can score 700 runs in a Test but that doesn’t help in any way. You need to take 20 wickets to win a Test match. So our top five batsmen plus the wicketkeeper will have to take responsibility and raise a big score so that we can bowl them out twice,” Kohli said at the pre-match press conference.

The Indian Test skipper emphasized that they need a strong bowling unit which can take 20 wickets. “Even if we do need put on a big score, we need to get enough runs so that we don’t need to bat for long the second time. This has been our mindset for the last two seasons and we want to start the series with that same mindset that our bowling should be strong enough to take 20 wickets,” Kohli added.

The 27-year old said that he has a team combination in his mind but cannot disclose it. “We have a combination in our mind, but I cannot really disclose that now. But we have learnt from the past after playing in Australia and Sri Lanka. We have learnt that we need to attack from the first Test itself and set the tone for the series. Therefore our strongest bowling unit needs to and as a batting line-up, we need to take responsibility.”

India playing XI: Shikhar Dhawan, Murali Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Wriddhiman Saha (WK), Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammad Shami, Amit Mishra, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav

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Horses for courses:

“Basically, we will look to go with horses for courses,” said the skipper. “We specialize in choosing people according to the way the wicket is going to behave, maybe on the third and fourth day as well. The best part is that everyone’s bought into the idea. The grass on the pitch is very important to bind the surface, but I think the surface looks really dry and soft.”

Virat believes that the surfaces are quite similar to ones they have back in India. “It’s not as hard as some of the other surfaces in West Indies. The wicket is no different from what we play back home, so I think it will be a decent batting wicket. There won’t be much bounce. Looking at how the wicket is going to behave, as I said, on days 3 and 4, which is very important to determine the result of the Test match, so we have some plans in mind,” he concluded.

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