Virat Kohli spends extra hours against spinners on roughed up track

A gleaming jet black Porsche arrived at the Ferozshah Kotla stadium at least half an hour before the arrival of the Indian team busOut came Virat Kohli and walked into the dressing room Within minutes he was out padded up and headed for the netsHe wanted additional batting time and arrived early for a session He began with customary throwdowns and some knocking off net bowlersOnce a young fellow bowling military medium was pulled disdainfully off his backfoot he asked for spinnersSpinners ko bulaao he said and moved to the other net where he worked on tackling of the spinnersAlso Read Back at it Virat Kohli hits gym trains intensively ahead of BorderGavaskar TrophyKohli looked at the rough created on that practice strip and then used his boots to create more abrasionBatting coach Vikram Rathour in fact pointed at particular areas where he could make indents and let the ball talkThe idea was to counter the natural variation off the surface where you land the ball on the rough and it can turn either sideIndia A regular Saurabh Kumar the talented leftarm spinner from UP did ask a few probing questionsThere was one delivery where Kohli went on the backfoot The ball didnt bounce after pitching It was a kind of shooter that didnt rise Kohli had a wry smile and looked at the surfaceThere were two off spinners net bowlers Pulkit Narang and Hrithik Shokeen who tossed up and at times mixed it up with flatter trajectoryOn the day he regularly came down the track to cover the rough while driving Shokeen and Narang during that session He wasnt very smooth to begin with as some of the shots werent off the meat of the bladeKohlis struggles against spinners has been real and Feroz Shah Kotla track will be another slow turner like Nagpur if not slower He was caught down the leg side when he tried to manoeuvre offspinner Todd Murphy in the Nagpur TestThere was a covering of grass but anyone who has watched how the Kotla pitch behaves will tell you that it is more about maintaining the firm bind of the surfaceBut there would be some moisture underneath the surface during the morning session which will help the bowlers But Kotla is a kind of track where both runmaking and wickettaking is an arduous jobKohlis desperation to spend an extra hour at the nets and prepare himself to put his best foot forward is absolutely necessary as runscoring is going to be a struggleThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever