It all rests on Virat Kohli’s shoulders now, as India attempt to chase down the remaining 84 runs in order to win the 1st Test at Edgbaston.
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England also realise the importance of the ‘Virat Kohli wicket’, and believe if they get him early, the India innings could fold soon enough.
James Anderson addressed the media after the end of day’s play yesterday and was confident about England’s chances as they would be rested and motivated coming into Day 4.
He emphasised on the fact that it was a going to be 25-30 over affair today and thus the bowling unit would be raring to go.
“We’ll go to bed dreaming about getting Kohli out first thing” Anderson said, as quoted by Cricbuzz.
“We need five wickets, simple as that, fairly quickly – otherwise, they’ll get the runs.”We’ve just got to give it everything we’ve got in the morning for the first 15-20 overs – leave absolutely nothing out there. It’s a really exciting place to be, because you know we could do something special tomorrow by winning this. It’s such a close Test match.” he added.
England have themselves to blame for letting Kohli bring India back to the game. Their slip catching has been awful and Kohli capitalised on it, scoring 149 and taking India within 13 runs of that England total.
“It’s an area where we’ve struggled for two years now,” Anderson said.
“The personnel in the team has changed quite a lot, so it’s been difficult to get a set cordon. But we’re just going to have to keep working harder and harder, pushing ourselves to be better, because you can’t keep creating the chances we are and not taking them. You can’t drop Virat Kohli on 21 (Anderson was the bowler) because he’s one of the best players in the world, and he’ll capitalise on that – which he did.
“We’ve spoken about it because of the amount of drops in the last two years, maybe even longer. When I was in the team that got to number one in the world, we caught everything. We had an amazing cordon, very fortunate, that was settled. At the minute, we’re struggling a little bit. All we can do is work extremely hard at it, and hope to improve.” he added.
Anderson is pretty happy with the quality of cricket in this Test and how it has been an advertisement for the format.
“What’s been great is the way the momentum has shifted, Test cricket at its best – the way we dominated the first two sessions of the match, then India wrestled back the momentum, then it was our job to go out and bowl well.
“To be a part of it is great, and tomorrow we’ve got a really good chance of winning the game.
“If we recover well tonight and come back fresh in the morning, we know it’s going to be 25-30 overs max one way or the other – so we can give it all we can.” he concluded.
84 runs, 5 wickets, one Virat Kohli; who do you think will win the 1st Test?
