India skipper Virat Kohli said his idea behind taking a short break after the T20 World Cup exit was to try and regain his rhythm batting against the red-ball for Test match cricket. Kohli missed the T20I series versus New Zealand entirely and also skipped the first Test of the two-match series that was played in Kanpur.
While stand-in captain Ajinkya Rahane led the Indian side to a draw at the Green Park, Kohli was seen training in Mumbai under the supervision of former India allrounder Sanjay Bangar, with a single-minded focus on getting his preparations right for the second Test versus the Kiwis and also the Gandhi-Mandela Trophy in South Africa.
There have been concerns around Kohli’s form with the bat as he has now not scored an international hundred since December 2019 when Bangladesh came visiting for a D/N Test in Kolkata. Speaking to the press, however, the captain denied feeling any heat and said there was no other idea behind opting for the break other than getting mentally refreshed and regaining red-ball rhythm.
“It was just to stay in the rhythm of playing red-ball cricket. The idea was to get repetition and volume, which is important in Test cricket. It is just about getting into the mould of switching in-between formats, something that I have always tried to do.”
“Whenever I get the opportunity to get some time to work on setting up for different formats. It is more so mentally than doing anything technique-wise. The more cricket you play, you understand your game more. It is just about getting into that headspace that you want to play in a certain way in a certain format. It was purely based on that,”
Kohli was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.
With Shreyas Iyer making a century, top-scoring for India in either innings of the Kanpur Test and earning the next Test for himself, Kohli is left to take a tough call immediately upon his comeback as to who replaces him in the side? Under the spot are three players – opener Mayank Agarwal, deputy Rahane and No.3 Cheteshwar Pujara – who have been struggling for runs for a while.
Kohli didn’t name the person who is about to be dropped but mentioned how important trust and communication is in such cases where an individual has to be told he is not playing.
“You have to obviously understand the situation of where the team is placed. You have to understand where individuals stand at certain stages during the course of a long season.”
“So you have to obviously communicate well. You have to speak to the individuals, and approach them in a way where you explain things to them properly. Mostly it has been combination-based whenever we have done changes in the past,”
he said.
Coming back to his decision to take time off after the painful Super 12 exit at the T20 World Cup, Kohli once again stressed the need for players to take breaks whenever they need them playing cricket in an excessively restrictive environment since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Kohli said it is crucial to go away from the bio-bubble environment whenever an individual can to “refresh yourself mentally”, adding that the idea isn’t so much to keep the physical strain at bay but to try and avoid the mental fatigue.
With New Zealand sneaking through to a draw in Kanpur, India will be under slight pressure to win at the Wankhede and close off the series 1-0. The Test match starts on December 3.
