PALLEKELE: While a 3-0 whitewash beckons Virat Kohli’s team the Indian captain does not want such distractions to affect his players and lose focus on what they should be doing.
“For us it’s about playing another Test match and trying to win another Test match. We have already won the series. But as I said it doesn’t mean that we can be complacent or afford to be complacent. It is another Test match that we are going to try and win,” said Kohli at the pre-match press conference yesterday.
“You cannot look at these things and go into a game, that’s certainly not what we think. I know none of the other team members are also thinking about this because I personally feel that it’s just a distraction that causes people to be over excited and that causes people to look too far ahead of what might be the outcome of this particular game. We need to stay in the present and treat every session with respect to win a Test match, and that’s exactly what we want to follow,” he said.
Having won the first two Test rather convincingly and sealed the three-match series India are unlikely to make any changes to their winning combination with the exception of replacing Ravindra Jadeja who has been suspended by the ICC for this match on disciplinary grounds.
“We have to understand that to play consistent cricket obviously you need to make sure that people are playing on a regular basis. Those who are performing and those who are doing well should continue in more games than not and to be a consistent side I think we need to have continuity as well unless the situations where things are not controllable arise,” said Kohli.
“We certainly don’t want to take anything lightly. We want to play the same kind of cricket that we have and hopefully retain the team that played the last game as much as we can. So we are certainly not thinking of too many changes at all, especially in this format because you don’t want to start taking things for granted and lose that momentum. We certainly are not thinking on drastic chances at this stage,” he said.
Kuldeep Yadav who bowls left-arm chinaman is expected to take Jadeja’s place.
“A guy like Kuldeep, when you hand him the ball he is willing to bowl in any situation, willing to bowl with attacking fields, willing to throw the ball up towards the batsmen, he believes in his own ability and believes in deceiving the batsmen with the skill that he has that’s his biggest quality,” said Kohli.
“He has proven himself in Dharamsala which was not such a spin friendly wicket and it was quite flat in the first 2-3 days of the Test match. He turned the game around for us so he has ability, which is very rare to find. A chinaman bowler is always something which is an x-factor in a team and I would say his confidence is his strong point. He has a great chance of playing tomorrow and I wish him all the best.”
Although India could not get a full session of practice in the last few days due to bad weather Kohli didn’t mind his team taking a few days off.
“We are certainly better placed to be able to afford a couple of days. Yesterday (Thursday) we took an off voluntarily and today it just happened to rain but the day before that we had a good practice. Also what you need to understand in places like Sri Lanka it is very hot and humid. People sometimes end up doing too much at practice and then maybe you don’t recover for a game,” said Kohli.
“It might just be a good thing for those who needed more rest especially the bowlers who have massive workload during Test matches. For us I feel it’s more of a positive thing than a hindrance that we didn’t have practice a day before the game because we are in a good zone. Everyone is playing good cricket and everyone is bowling well. So we feel absolutely comfortable going into the Test match even though we didn’t practice today.”
Add new comment