Had already enquired about Kohli a while back: Alec Stewart

Alec Stewart, the director of cricket at the Surrey County Cricket Club, has revealed that he has been interested in securing the services of Virat Kohli for quite some time and had already sent an inquiry to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) earlier, but he found out that Kohli wouldn’t be available as India had a Test match scheduled against Afghanistan just ahead of the England tour.

However now that it seems Kohli and BCCI have changed their mind and the Indian captain is ready for a brief county stint, Stewart says the Surrey hierarchy will be very keen to land the 29-year-old who is arguably the best batsman in the world at the moment across all formats of the game.

“I did enquire a while back about Kohli when it appeared to be a possible option for him to play county cricket but was told India were playing Ireland in T20s and an inaugural test against Afghanistan in June before the England tour. If he does now become available, we would look at it again to see if it could potentially work around our current overseas assignments,” Stewart was quoted saying by The Telegraph.

Surrey signed up Mitch Marsh

Surrey roped in Mitchell Marsh as one of their overseas signings a few weeks ago and the Australian all-rounder committed for the whole season sacrificing his opportunity to play in the Indian Premier League (IPL). However since the counties can sign two overseas players for the championship, there is one slot still vacant where Kohli can fit in.

If Kohli indeed signs for Surrey, he will be the third Indian player to feature in the upcoming county season after Cheteshwar Pujara and Ishant Sharma who are going to turn up for Yorkshire and Sussex respectively. While this will be the debut stint for Kohli and Ishant, Pujara has played for Yorkshire before and is not new to county cricket.

The idea for all three of them to play in the county championship before the all-important series against England is to acclimatize to the conditions and get themselves prepared in the best possible way.

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