The Indian Test skipper, Virat Kohli won the toss and decided to bat frost in the third and final match of the series against South Africa at Newland in Cape Town. The Indian openers, KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal, who displayed brilliant batting performance in the first two Tests of the ongoing Test series, departed early in the first session.
Rahul managed to score only 12 runs before falling to Duanne Olivier in the 12th over, while Mayank (15) departed in the very next over bowled by Kagiso Rabada. Virat Kohli, who missed the last game due to an upper back spasm, walked out to bat after the dismissal of Mayank and did not score runs off the first 15 balls that he faced.
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However, the India Test captain had shown immense grit and patience and he eventually opened his account with a beautiful cover drive in the 19th over against Marco Jansen. Sunil Gavaskar, who is currently part of the commentary team in the ongoing three-match series stated that, “Nobody plays that extra-cover drive than Kohli.”
Here is the video of the shot by Virat Kohli:
Even Kohli can’t stop Kohli from playing the cover drive pic.twitter.com/ut15Pj6Maj
— Sonali (@samtanisonali1) January 11, 2022
During the toss, Virat Kohli said they have made a couple of changes as Hanuma Vihari and Mohammed Siraj made way for captain and Umesh Yadav respectively. On the other hand, South African skipper, Dean Elgar said they have made no changes to their playing 11 as compared to the second Test which they win by 7 wickets.
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South Africa Playing XI: Dean Elgar (c), Aiden Markram, Keegan Petersen, Rassie van der Dussen, Temba Bavuma, Kyle Verreynne (wk), Marco Jansen, Kagiso Rabada, Keshav Maharaj, Duanne Olivier, Lungi Ngidi
India Playing XI: KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli (c), Ajinkya Rahane, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Umesh Yadav
