IND vs ENG | There has been too much noise around spinning tracks, reckons Virat Kohli 

The pitch talks have gone crazy after the third Test at the Narendra Modi Stadium culminated inside the first two days with India winning the game comfortably and taking a lead of 2-1 in the series. Many cricket experts have called out India for allegedly preparing unfair pitches and taking the concept of the home advantage to an unacceptable level. 

However, the Indian skipper, Virat Kohli, isn't too impressed with all the pitch talks and reckons that these conversations are only limited to spinning pitches as batsmen are called out for poor batting on seaming tracks which isn't the case for turners. He also asked the Indian media to present the team's point of view in regards to the pitches to maintain a proper and balanced discussion amidst the raging pitch debates. 

“Yeah, I totally believe that there has been too much noise and talks about spinning tracks. I believe that if our media is there to support us, then it will be a balanced conversation. The unfortunate bit is that even our media has talked about these pitches. We lost the match in New Zealand in 34 overs, none of the pitch was criticized, none even talked about the swing and seam there," Kohli told the reporters in the presser ahead of the fourth Test that starts from March 4 in Ahmedabad. 

We would continue to play like that as a team, without listening to all this criticism. It is always that when there is a spinning track, the pitch gets criticized but when it is a seaming track, you only hear about bad batting,” 

Virat Kohli was called out by the former English skipper Alastair Cook for criticizing the batsmen and not the pitch in the aftermath of the pink-ball Test. The Indian skipper stood his ground and again suggested that it was indeed poor batting from both sides in the third Test 

“I don’t understand why the cricket ball, the pitches and conditions always come in conversation. I still maintain my stance that the batsmen played horribly, they didn’t live upto the mark. I don’t think the red-ball is going to change anything dramatically, the pitch was a lot quicker than the Chennai one. So I will still maintain my stance that it was poor batting in the last Test from both the sides."

Kohli also made it clear that he doesn't care whether a game finishes inside two days or stretches to five days as he plays to win the game than anything else. 

“I don’t have an answer to your question, we are not here to entertain people but for wins, we don’t care about the five-day finish, four-day finish or three-day finish. If only the teams are batting very badly, the games get over in two days. So for me, this question isn’t very important because we just talk about winning."

One of the most asked questioned in the last week or so has been, how does one counter spinners on rank turners like there have been in the last two Tests? Kohli stated that on such turning wickets, a batter's defensive technique holds the utmost value. 

“Defense is really important, if you look at any highlights, there have been two batsmen who have ground sessions out. Because of white-ball cricket, we are getting more results nowadays in Test cricket. We don’t focus on the grind, we don’t focus on defence and this is a big factor and skills is the utmost important factor to play on such surfaces. From my point of view, my best shot is  the defence and that part of the game, we should keep evolving.”

The 32-year-old didn't reveal the playing XI for the fourth Test, however, he did indicate that there won't be many changes in the ide for the series finale. 

"Combination, we will look at it tomorrow, we have a set pattern and there won’t be too many changes, most probably will be a similar lineup from the last game.”