India vs England | Injury-hit Virat Kohli can be more dangerous, warns Trevor Bayliss

08/17/2018

England coach Trevor Bayliss has warned his side that Virat Kohli, despite not being a 100%, can be equally dangerous for them in the third Test match in Nottingham. Kohli’s back pain flared up on Day 4 of the Lord’s Test and after not coming out to field, he looked in some discomfort while batting.

“It could mean he’s more of a dangerous player. Through history there are a lot of players who have played with an injury and scored runs and taken wickets. I don’t know if that focuses the mind more ... but I have just seen him take some slip catches without any problems, so I’m sure he’ll be playing. That won’t change our approach to the way we play him,” said the English coach when he was asked about Kohli’s back injury.

However, Shastri said that Kohli, who was struggling with a back injury late in the Lord's Test, is feeling much better now. The Indian skipper batted freely in the nets and is improving day by day. Bayliss did talk about the conditions in Nottingham where he expects the wicket for the third Test to be quite similar to that of Lord’s which would help the English seamers to dominate against the Indian batsmen again.

“Normally there is a bit of swing around, we’re looking forward to it being the same as Lord’s. That would be nice,” stated Bayliss.

Bayliss also talked about the challenges faced by the cricketers while playing Test matches away from home in tough and testing conditions. According to him, the pitches prepared for games these days mostly favour the home team.

“You don’t really get a lot of time practising in those conditions. Look around the world, the wickets these days do favour the home team a lot. And I think that’s fair enough,” explained Bayliss.

Bayliss was also asked about increasing the number of warm-up games for visiting sides before a particular Test series and he replied, “The practice that you get before a tour… the difficulty is there’s no time to spend 3-4 weeks before a Test series getting practice in. There’s so much cricket on. And the players do need rest in between. If you try and schedule too much, the players will burn out and you’ll have to rest them from international games. That’s one of the small problems.”

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