St. Lucia: India skipper Virat Kohli today dropped hints that he would like to persist with KL Rahul, who seized the opportunity by scoring a hundred in the absence of injured Murali Vijay in the second Test against the West Indies.
Rahul scored 158 when he replaced Murli Vijay, who had to sit out due to a hand injury.
“The good thing is all three openers are playing well. The bad thing is that you can only choose two between three. That is a call we need to take as management. We’ll sit down today and do that. Getting injured when playing well is not in your hand. That’s why they say injuries can really upset people and bring them down. The good thing is Vijay has been in a good headspace. He’s back to the nets and back to fielding and we will take a call on that,” Kohli said on the eve of the third Test.
“Injuries are not in anyone’s hands. Even in the IPL, I remember a game where Mandeep Singh was fit and set to play. While I was at the toss he split his webbing, KL got a chance and he hasn’t looked back since. We conveyed to Mandeep that unfortunately it was an injury and nothing can be done about that. We need to look at the balance of the side,” explained the skipper.
Kohli said his bowlers learnt a useful lesson from the drawn second Test.
“It turned out to be more challenging on day five. We know that we had the upper hand throughout. If we had play on day four we would have probably wrapped up things. The momentum was with us and it is a massive factor in cricket, in all formats, especially in Test cricket and that can only be attained by playing consistent cricket.
“We did that over a period of three days, we got the momentum, we were dominating, but you don’t have control over the weather and conditions.
PTI