ENG vs IND 2018: Will go to bed dreaming about getting Virat Kohli’s wicket, says James Anderson 

India needs 84 more runs to win the Edgbaston Test with only 5 wickets in hand and Virat Kohli batting on 43*.

India needs 84 more runs to win the Edgbaston Test with only 5 wickets in hand and Virat Kohli batting on 43*.

At the end of play on Day 3, England fast bowler James Anderson has said that the home side will have to get the very dangerous looking Virat Kohli out as soon as possible on Day 4 if they are to win the cliff-hanger in Birmingham. Anderson is very much determined to be the bowler to make the telling impact on the game by getting the wicket of India's best batsman and said, that as India approaches the next 84 runs in the chase with just 5 wickets in hand, he'll "go to bed dreaming about getting Virat Kohli’s wicket."

Speaking about it in the press conference at the end of day's play, Anderson said, “We’ll go to bed dreaming about getting Kohli out first thing, We need five wickets, simple as that, fairly quickly – otherwise, they’ll get the runs, We’ve just got to give it everything we’ve got in the morning for the first 15-20 overs – leave absolutely nothing out there. It’s a really exciting place to be because you know we could do something special tomorrow by winning this. It’s such a close Test match,” 

About the game, Anderson feels this is “Test cricket at its best” and said, “What’s been great is the way the momentum has shifted, Test cricket at its best – the way we dominated the first two sessions of the match, then India wrestled back the momentum, then it was our job to go out and bowl well. To be a part of it is great, and tomorrow we’ve got a really good chance of winning the game, If we recover well tonight and come back fresh in the morning, we know it’s going to be 25-30 overs max one way or the other – so we can give it all we can,”

The game would never have gone this close, if England had taken all their catches. Talking about the slip-fielding in particular, as Virat Kohli got dropped for 21 and gone on to score one of Test Cricket's best modern-day hundreds in the first innings, Anderson said, “It’s an area where we’ve struggled for two years now, The personnel in the team has changed quite a lot, so it’s been difficult to get a set cordon. But we’re just going to have to keep working harder and harder, pushing ourselves to be better, because you can’t keep creating the chances we are and not taking them. You can’t drop Virat Kohli on 21 (Anderson was the bowler) because he’s one of the best players in the world, and he’ll capitalise on that – which he did,” 

 “We’ve spoken about it because of the number of drops in the last two years, maybe even longer. When I was in the team that got to number one in the world, we caught everything. We had an amazing cordon, very fortunate, that was settled. At the minute, we’re struggling a little bit. All we can do is work extremely hard at it, and hope to improve,” 

(Inputs from Indian Express)

 
 

By Kashish Chadha - 04 Aug, 2018

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