India cricket icon Virat Kohli is all set to feature in his 4th ODI World Cup, having first featured in the 2011 edition which he won under the leadership of MS Dhoni. As Kohli gets the 2023 World Cup campaign underway, he would be on the cusp of going past Anil Kumble in an elite list of World Cup players. At present, Kohli and Kumble jointly hold the record of taking the most number of catches in ODI World Cup history for India.
Both Kohli and Kumble have grabbed 14 catches each for India in World Cups. While Kumble needed 18 matches to hit the mark, Kohli required 26.
Back to the grind after a couple of days’ leave, Virat Kohli’s extended net session was the focal point of Team India’s first training session in the city ahead of its World Cup opener against Australia on Sunday.
Closed door sessions are prevalent among football teams, where managers don’t want anyone to get a whiff of tactical preparedness of a team.
But it is not very common among cricket teams where tactical stuff is way more set but on Wednesday, Indian team decided to bar media from watching the session.
The biggest talking point will be bowling composition and whether India will field an extra seamer in Mohammed Shami or use local hero Ravichandran Ashwin depending on the surface used for the game.
With Hardik Pandya bowling 6-7 overs per game and at times even full quota, the temptation will be to field Ashwin, who can play with Australian minds.
Kohli faced customary throw-ins for considerable period before facing some of the local net bowlers.
While it was scheduled to be a two-hour training session, Kohli put in an extra 45 minutes as the team has already missed two warm-up games, which helps in simulation.
India missing out on its CWC warm-ups is not entirely a loss, given it had already played a three-match ODI series against Australia a couple of weeks back.
Although Kohli did not play the opening two games of the series, he did manage to play a composed knock of a 61-ball 56 in the final ODI in Rajkot.
With PTI inputs
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