Battle on even turf?

Bengaluru: Steven Smith didn’t waste any time on arrival at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium on Friday. He did the expected. The Aussie skipper, along with the Indian expert by his side, Sridharan Sriram, strode quickly to the turf in the middle.  

All said and done, it’s all about the 22 yards. You can take anything out of their minds, but you can’t get the pitch out of the equation.

For Virat Kohli, this turf is almost home, maybe even more than Delhi these days, given his IPL connection, and it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t give it as much thought as Smith may have.

But true to style, Kohli hasn’t let the Pune debacle bring him down; the battle was lost but the war is yet to be won and that’s what Team India, backed by the skipper’s feisty brand of cricket will look to conquer.

The Aussies are past masters at mind games but the current crop led by Kohli are no novices and though India start under a wee bit pressure against the visitors in the second Test starting from Saturday, they aren’t losing sleep over it.

Down 0-1, Kohli’s India have to do the catching up now but fortunately it’s a four-Test series; there is time for turnaround and that’s exactly what India will be looking for in the second game of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. The Aussies, no surprise here, are going in with the same personnel that pulled off the massive victory in Pune, pinning faith in spinners Steve O’Keefe and Nathan Lyon to do the trick after Mitchell Start and Josh Hazlewood set the cat amongst the pigeons.

Then again, Bengaluru is not Pune and if anything, we’re unlike to see another repeat of Pune for many years. While it may have burst the bubble of the Indian team’s unbeaten run, the positive outcome from the defeat is that the web of complacency, even if it’s just a tiny one, will have been flung away.

Shaken? Yes. Stirred? Definitely. It doesn’t take much to stir the passion in Kohli and given the pride with which he plays and the unwavering zeal that he brings to the turf, the Indian captain will be looking for revival.

Of his game and of the team. “Sometimes such losses are necessary for the team. We have to test a lot of things,” said Kohli, forthright as ever.

If anything, the 28-year-old is always fired up by Australia. Thrust into Test captaincy after MS Dhoni chose to retire after the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne in 2014, Kohli, the firebrand cricketer, has quickly become the leader the group looks up to.

It’s the same group that he will exhort now, starting on Saturday to pull level with the Aussies as they seek to dominate the visitors again.

Karun for Jayant?
While the team-management may have more or less decided on the eleven - Kohli did admit as much without giving the composition away - they may be toying with the idea of going in with an extra batsman at the expense of Jayant Yadav which again puts the burden on the four bowlers.

It automatically translates to the only triple centurion in India after Virender Sehwag, the diminutive Karun Nair, who smashed an unforgettable 303 on debut against England in Chennai in December.

Also, given the extreme scrutiny of the pitch following the Pune fiasco, the turf here is likely to go the traditional way: bat-friendly on the first two days before bringing the bowlers into play.

That automatically translates winning the toss into an advantage: bat first, bat big and pile on the pressure. The last time around, AB de Villiers’ 100th Test was a washout here in 2015 but Kohli’s legion of fans will be hoping the team ups the heat in the throes of summer.

“We take losses together, we take wins together and that’s how we move forward as a team. That’s one reason that we ended up having that streak, which we didn’t expect honestly. It became a streak eventually,” said Kohli on the eve of the game.

While the Oz XI are confident and ready, the Indians, it appears, may also bring in Bhuvneshwar Kumar for Ishant Sharma, relying more the former’s swing than the latter’s pace.

“Combinations, I won’t let it out right now but we do have two or three combinations that we are looking at. We’ll see what works best for this surface,” said Kohli.

The Indian skipper doesn’t need to walk to the turf like Smith; he just believes in walking the talk. With the willow.