India’s fielding coach R Sridhar said on Thursday at the end of the first day’s play that the seriousness of Virat Kohli’s shoulder injury will be assessed on Friday morning after the scan reports.
Kohli sustained the injury in the 40th over when diving to save a boundary and was off the field for the rest of the day. While as a precautionary measure, he took ice-pack treatment, Sridhar said that Kohli's “scans will be taken later on Thursday and the exact status of the injury will be known on Friday morning”.
Sridhar said that the outfield was fast and that the only way to stop boundaries was “to try and dive and cut the ball on fast, sloping, hard outfields”. He said that the first boundary of the day, a tap by Matt Renshaw off Ishant Sharma in which the ball beat Ravichandran Ashwin to the boundary proved that the outfield was fast.
While India’s bowlers took four wickets in the entire day – three in the first session, one in the second and none at all in the third session – Sridhar said that vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane took charge of the team in Kohli’s absence well.
He said: “Ajinkya did a very good job and was very sure of the plans. He was taking advice from Ashwin and other senior players and did the bowling changes well and kept the positive energy going”.
Sridhar admitted that this was “among the better batting days this series” but was sure of coming back like they have done earlier this home season. “This is not the first time. Examples of Mumbai and Chennai Test come to mind when we came back into the match. A couple of good spells from Umesh Yadav today, reversing the ball at times was the way to go about. Certainly, bouncer is not an option when there is not much pace on the pitch. Let’s see how the game unfolds tomorrow,” Sridhar said.
