IND v ENG 2021: Virat Kohli says no regrets over leaving Kuldeep out; backs Rahane to come good

India lost the first Test against England by 227 runs.

Indian captain Virat Kohli admitted that the England team was more professional than the home side, as they won the first Test in Chennai by 227 runs to go 1-0 up in the four-match Test series. It was an amazing performance by the visitors, whose bowlers got more out of the pitch than the home side.

Joe Root led from the front for England, as he scored 218 and 40 in two innings, helping them make 578 and 178 respectively. Indian bowling attack featured Ishant Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, R Ashwin as the main bowlers, with Shahbaz Nadeem and Washington Sundar in support.

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While the main bowlers did extremely well, with Ashwin even picking a 6-wicket haul; Nadeem managed just 4 wickets in two innings, while Sundar went wicket-less though he had made 85* in India’s first innings.

Many experts and fans felt that Kuldeep Yadav, who was overlooked for this match, should’ve played instead of India bolstering the batting by bringing Sundar in after Akshar Patel, who was slated to make his debut, got injured on the day of the match.

However, Virat Kohli, in the press conference after the match, said that he had no regrets about leaving the left-arm chinaman Kuldeep out of the playing XI and explained why.

“Not really, not at all. When you play 2 off-spinners, Kuldeep more or less becomes a similar bowling option with him taking the ball away. You need variety in the bowling attack. So we were quite clear on the combination we wanted to play.

So there are no regrets in that decision. Moving forward, we will think of combinations that will give us variety in the bowling attack. Not one dimensional, so these things are very important going forward," Virat Kohli said.

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Nadeem had an unimpressive outing as he gave away 233 runs in 59 overs for his 4 matches and to top it bowled 9 no balls as well.

Kohli was further probed about the dismal performance of vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane, who scored 1 & 0 in this Test match. After his magnificent, match-winning century at the MCG against Australia on the recent tour down under, Rahane has failed to pass fifty in the remaining outings.

Rahane has managed just 779 runs at 29.96 in 18 matches with a single hundred and 6 fifty-plus scores under Kohli's leadership in India.

"Ajinkya Rahane is, I have said this many times in the past as well, along with Cheteshwar Pujara is our most important Test batsman and he is going to continue to be. We believe in his abilities, we have believed in his abilities for a long time now. He is an impact player," Kohli told the press on Tuesday.

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Kohli backed Rahane to come good and defended his deputy, bringing up his century in Melbourne, which helped India stay alive in the Test series in Australia, after the Adelaide debacle.

"In the MCG Test, he stood up and scored a hundred for his team when we wanted it the most. You can look at the number of innings and what happens from there on, the reality of the situation is we won the series in Australia.

And here, there is just one test, two innings. Today, yes, you can put that innings aside. In the first innings, he wanted to score a boundary. It was a brilliant catch by Joe Root that got rid of him. If that had gone for a boundary and he had scored runs, we are not having this conversation,” Kohli added.

(India today inputs)