The Indian team landed in South Africa for the upcoming 3 Tests and as many ODI, and their preparations are looking pretty much on song. The first Test is scheduled to be commencing on December 26. It has to be noted that Virat Kohli and his men under the guidance of Rahul Dravid will fight to defy history against the Proteas as they have never won a Test series in the rainbow nation. Hence, it would be interesting to see how this series pans out.
Meanwhile, the official Twitter handle of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) shared a video on Sunday (December 19), where Indian batters can be seen polishing their skills in nets. They captioned it as, “Getting Test-match ready, Snippets from #TeamIndia’s first practice session ahead of the first #SAvIND Test.” In the clip, head coach Rahul Dravid was also spotted giving batting tips to skipper Kohli.
Getting Test-match ready 👌 👌
🎥 Snippets from #TeamIndia's first practice session ahead of the first #SAvIND Test. pic.twitter.com/QkrdgqP959
— BCCI (@BCCI) December 19, 2021
Notably, this series will mark the start of the Dravid-Kohli era in Indian cricket and the duo will be expected to take the team to different heights. For the unversed, Rahul Dravid and Virat Kohli played a decent amount of cricket together during the latter’s the two have played a lot of cricket together and are also known to share a great bond. Hence, it would be interesting to see how their partnership will unfold.
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Meanwhile, eyes will be on Kohli’s performance in terms of his batting amid the ongoing controversy in Indian cricket. While announcing India’s Test squad for the tour, BCCI suddenly decided to sack Kohli as ODI captain, giving the reins to Rohit Sharma. More interestingly, BCCI president Sourav Ganguly then claimed that he had requested to not step down as India’s T20I captain post the T20 World Cup 2021.
As he didn’t agree to do so, the BCCI selectors gave the entire charge of white-ball cricket to Rohit. As per the quotes in News18, Sourav Ganguly said, “I personally requested him (Kohli) not to give up the T20I captaincy. Obviously, he felt the workload. Which is fine, he has been a great cricketer, he has been very intense with his cricket.”
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Virat Kohli, however, contradicted the claims, saying no such request was made. During his pre-departure press-conference, he said, “When I communicated with the BCCI first about quitting T20I captaincy, I told them that this is my point of view, these are the reasons for my decision, it was received quite well. No one took offence, no one had any hesitation. No one told me that I should not leave the T20I captaincy.”
