Anil Kumble: KL Rahul to play in the second Test against England

Rahul, who missed a major part of the New Zealand series last month after suffering a hamstring injury in the opening Test, struck 76 and 106 against Rajasthan in the national competition and will replace Gautam Gambhir at the top of the order in the second England Test.

"Yes, Rahul is available for selection and you would want Rahul to be in the starting line-up, that's the reason he has been included," Kumble told reporters on Tuesday (Nov 15).

"He had an injury in Kanpur which all of you are aware of. And then since then, he was not available for any of the Test matches against New Zealand nor for the one-dayers. He has recovered now and as per the protocol, we wanted him to go and play a first-class match and I think today he got a hundred. In the first innings, he got 70-plus against Rajasthan.

“Since the match was happening very close to Vizag, it's good to have him in the squad and he is available for selection,” the former Test captain added.

Speaking about the first Test against England in Rajkot, where the hosts lost six wickets in the second innings before saving the game, Kumble said: “Overall, if you look at the first innings, both teams batted close to 160 overs each, so it was a challenge for the bowlers to pick up wickets. It was a good wicket to bat on.

“Yes, when you look at the last day, those 50 overs, I don't like to read too much into that batting that happened in those 70 overs.

"If you look at that, probably if Pujara had taken the DRS, probably it would have been 170 for 1 and probably people would have focused more on the pitch. But it was a performance where I thought it was a good batting surface and there were six centuries - two from us and four from the English batsmen.

“It was a good Test match but unfortunately we couldn't get a result.”

Kumble blamed the side’s poor catching, especially in the first innings where they dropped five chances off the seamers.

"I thought the fast bowlers bowled really well. Both (Mohammed) Shami and Umesh (Yadav) bowled exceptionally well on that surface. They got it to reverse as well and they troubled all the English batsmen,” the former leg-spinner said.

"If you look at the only aspect where we probably let ourselves down, it was in the catching. We have done really well in all the three departments over the past three and a half months that I have been a part of this team or even before that. Our batting, our bowling and catching is something that this team really prides itself on. That's something where we probably let ourselves down, the catching department."