Chennai: Indian Test captain Virat Kohli expressed his confidence in Ravichandran Ashwin’s batting abilities and said there is no reason why the Tamil Nadu tweaker can’t be the all-rounder the Indian team is looking for in Tests.
“Ashwin, Bhuvi [Bhuvneshwar Kumar] and Bhajji [Harbhajan Singh] are all handy with the bat. Ashwin has a Test average of 40 and I cannot see that why he can’t be that all-rounder for us. That’s the challenge. Giving people goals and asking them to improve in certain aspects where the team requires,” Kohli told media at the pre-departure press conference ahead of the three-Test series in Sri lanka.
Kohli again stressed that he would like to play five bowlers in order to give the team a chance to take 20 wickets and also that three spinners could be a reality during the series.
“You need to play a stronger bowling side in order to win Test matches and it’s more exciting and satisfying as well. Yes, that’s a possibility [three spinners]. The idea is to take 20 wickets.
“I strongly believe that you need your best bowlers to play in order to give your team a chance to do that. The whole idea of playing five bowlers is that the top six have to take more responsibility,” the skipper said.
Kohli said the Sri Lanka series will give him a proper chance to execute certain plans.
“It is an opportunity to have certain plans to prepare for a particular series. Actually judge ourselves on the basis of those three Test matches and analyse how many times we were able to do things actually we wanted to do. I think in one-off Test matches you do not get that opportunity.
“You prepare for a week or 10 days and that game gets over in five days and correct things and straight away go in to the second game. That is very exciting for me personally to play a full series as a captain and to be able to have the opportunity of executing certain things that we want to do as a team,” said Kohli.
Kohli is happy there is some competition at the top of the order, with KL Rahul and Shikhar Dhawan both in good form in the longer format.
“As far as the contest in the opening slot, it is the spot that is being contested very strongly. Rahul coming through Australia and batting really well when Shikhar was not performing consistently. Rahul stepped in beautifully. Now Shikhar got runs again and [Murali] Vijay has got runs for us consistently.
“So, it is just about who is playing well at that particular point of time. Problem of plenty is never bad, so might have even three guys playing well rather than two guys who are not playing well. I think this is the good problem we have in our side. I am not really worried about that.”
The skipper was also defended Rohit Sharma’s string of poor scores in Test matches and said he is happy with the Mumbaikar’s batting slot.
“We figured that Rohit is an impact player. In one-day cricket he bats up the order and we felt that two aspects are different when it comes to Test cricket. He was batting at six and that was the set up we had in one day cricket. As a batsman, you want to bat in one position in both Test and ODI games and plan that way. That was the whole idea to bring the best of Rohit.”
