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India batter Virat Kohli’s struggle against deliveries pitched outside the off stump continues as he got out chasing a delivery from Jaydev Unadkat in the two-day intra-squad warm-up game.
The two-time World Test Championship (WTC) finalists will begin the new cycle with two-Test series against West Indies starting July 12. Ahead of the series, the players played an intra-squad warm-up game to adapt to the Caribbean conditions.
Kohli walked out to bat with Shubman Gill. He played a few good shots. Then the left-arm seamer changed the angle and bowled from around the wicket. He played away from the body and nicked the ball to second slip fielder.
In the WTC 2023 final against Australia last month, Kohli lost his wicket to Scott Boland playing a similar shot. Kohli had played himself in but missed his half-century in the mammoth run chase at Kennington Oval as India lost by a big margin of 209 runs. Often, he has lost his wicket after playing himself in an attempt to poke at delivery away from body.
On the other hand, Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal looked comfortable in the middle. Rohit even hit a six off Unadkat. While Shubman Gill is expected to open the innings alongside Indian captain in the first Test, speculations are ripe that Jaiswal is likely to be India’s new no.3 after Cheteshwar Pujara’s exit from the Test squad.
The 21-year-old has had an impressive First-Class record. He has scored 1,845 runs from 15 games at an average of 80.21 including nine centuries and two half-centuries.
After the two-day warm-up game, the Rohit Sharma-led India will go to Dominica for the first Test that will start on July 12. The second Test will be played at Queen's Park Oval, Port of Spain, Trinidad.
India Test squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ajinkya Rahane (vc), KS Bharat (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Axar Patel, Mohammed Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat, Navdeep Saini
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