Former Indian skipper, Sourav Ganguly is in favor of Virat Kohli’s starting eleven for the opening Test encounter against South Africa in Cape Town despite India lost the game by 72 runs.
Indian batting order collapsed miserably in their both outings, which raised few question marks over giving Rohit Sharma go ahead of rather experienced Ajinkya Rahane, who has much better overseas batting record than any other among current batsmen.
But Ganguly feels Kohli should not worry about the playing XI. He said “Virat Kohli should not worry about such things [team combination]. Although KL Rahul and Ajinkya Rahane have a good history of scoring runs away from the sub-continent and have better records as batsmen, India can’t just chop-and-change in every game. They have shown faith in the current batting and that should continue in the next Test as well. They still have two more Tests to play and I feel all the matches will produce results.”
Meanwhile, Ganguly was pleased with India’s bowling efforts in Cape Town, where they managed to crack 20 wickets and break the hoodoo of not performing well in suitable conditions.
The 45-year-old further added in his column for Times of India “There has been a lot of talk about the combination. India did the right thing by going in with five bowlers. As much as scoring runs is important in a bid to win Test matches, getting wickets is also key. The reason why we were thinking of an Indian win at some point is because the bowlers got 20 wickets and that will continue to be an important criteria over the next two Tests.”
However, the southpaw is happy with the find of Hardik Pandya, who kept India in the game with his all-rounder’s ability. “Hardik Pandya came good with the bat and India should persist with him. The problem lies with the overall batting performance, and this has to be fixed soon. There will be a lot of talk about players who were not in the playing eleven. That’s always the case when you lose,” he mentioned.
Talking about the challenging conditions of Cape Town, former opener commented “I have played on similar sorts of pitches in the past, at Headingley or the Wanderers, and though India finished on the winning side then, the bowlers were always in the game. To be honest, this was a tough pitch for Indian batsmen as it was the first Test of the series and the boys were still getting used to the conditions.”
The second game of the series will be played in Centurion from January 13.
