Birmingham
\nEngland coach Trevor Bayliss feels the seemingly peerless Virat Kohli can be put under pressure if the home team\u2019s bowlers can continue to tame the rest of the Indian line-up in the ongoing Test series.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Virat Kohli is not the best batsman (in the world), he\u2019s very close to it. The way he played the first and second innings was high-class stuff. If we can put pressure on the other batsmen in the Indian team, that\u2019s going to add to the pressure on him,\u201d Bayliss told reporters here.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s any different for us. We\u2019ve got a few guys who are not necessarily cemented in the team and that put extra pressure on people like Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow,\u201d said Bayliss.<\/p>\n
India lost the first Test here by 31 runs after two successive batting collapses, during which Kohli stood out with his heroics\u2014a hundred in the first innings and a half century in the second essay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this first Test, the four innings had wickets falling left, right and center \u2013 all batsmen were in trouble, even Kohli, who I don\u2019t think was all that comfortable early on. It was difficult to bat, probably more difficult than it looked from outside,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Bayliss said he expects the Indian team to learn quickly from the mistakes committed while tackling the moving ball just as his team would look to address its weak handling of spin, in the remaining four matches of the series.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndia are a very good team. We\u2019re very much in the hunt here. When the ball\u2019s moving, we\u2019ve shown that a few of their guys do struggle against the moving ball. I\u2019m sure that they\u2019ll be going away working out how they can play it as we\u2019re going working on how to play the off spin,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
All-rounder Ben Stokes will be appearing in Bristol today to answer charges of affray during a pub brawl. England have drafted in pacer Chris Woakes as replacement with 20-year-old batsman Oliver Pope getting his maiden call-up in place of Dawid Malan.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis preparation and approach was no different to what we\u2019ve seen before. You wouldn\u2019t have known there was anything coming up. He\u2019s been absolutely golden. It will be interesting to see who can step up and take his place,\u201d Bayliss said.<\/p>\n
Talking about Woakes\u2019 recall, he said, \u201cChris was fine here. We had him bowling in the nets. One of first practice days here, he bowled 14 overs in the nets. He\u2019s gone back and played a couple of T20 games and back into match mode. Fitness wise he should be fine.\u201d Pope\u2019s inclusion means one more left-hander in the English line-up for R Ashwin to bowl against. Bayliss said this factor wasn\u2019t and won\u2019t be a concern when picking the playing eleven at Lord\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to pick a second-best team because they\u2019re all right-handers. Certainly, with Ashwin bowling so well to all batsmen but obviously to the left-handers, we\u2019ll have to have a bit of a chat and see how we might be able to play him a little different.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be nice. It gets a bit of sideways movement. I\u2019m a fan of Test cricket and you watch these games and some of these lower scores they do, most of the time, give a good Test match for the fans,\u201d said Bayliss.<\/p>\n
The other cause of concern for England will be their slip catching. The hosts have only a slightly better record catching against pacers than India. Both Malan and Shikhar Dhawan dropped a few sitters in the slips, which, in fact, helped shape the see-saw Test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Birmingham England coach Trevor Bayliss feels the seemingly peerless Virat Kohli can be put under pressure if the home team\u2019s bowlers can continue to tame the rest of the Indian line-up in the ongoing Test series. \u201cIf Virat Kohli is not the best batsman (in the world), he\u2019s very close to it. The way he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38419,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38417\/revisions\/38419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}