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India's captain Virat Kohli plays a shot during the third day of their second test cricket match against Sri Lanka in Nagpur. (AP Image)
The pitch has historically favoured the spinners here but with Virat Kohli asking for tracks with pace and bounce with one eye firmly on the South African tour, it will be interesting to see the kind of surface Delhi produces.
Historically spinners have dominated the pacers in Kotla since 01 Jan 2000.
o 61.54% of the wickets have been taken by the spinners in Kotla.
o Spinners have taken 11 5-fors and 1 10-for whereas the pacers managed to take only 2 5-fors in Test at the Feroz Shah Kotla.
Indian spinners have taken 103 Test wickets, nine 5-fors and one 10-for as compared to foreign spinners with 49 wickets and two 5-fors at Kotla.
Indians have accounted for 67.76% of the wickets taken by spinners in this period.
So, the stats certainly suggest that spinners are likely to dominate at Kotla. But with Kohli already mentioning more than once that he wants pace friendly tracks, the pressure will be on the curators to live upto Kohli's expectations.
Local boy Kohli will want the track to be more similar to the one in Kolkata.
"Unfortunately we get only two days before we fly to South Africa after this series gets over," Kohli said, on the eve of the second Test against Sri Lanka in Nagpur. "So we have no choice but to be in game situation and think of what's coming ahead of us.
"Had we got a month off, ideally, we would have done a proper preparation in a camp sort of scenario but we have to make do with what we have. As usual, cramped for time, which I think we need to assess in future as well, because we very easily assess the team when we go abroad but we don't look at how many days we have got to prepare before we go to a particular place to play."
First Published: December 1, 2017, 1:22 PM IST