Virat Kohli remained unbeaten on 43 at Stumps on Day 3. (Source: Reuters)
The first Test between India and England at Edgbaston has come down to two statistics – India need 84 runs to win and England need 5 wickets to win. In a chase of 194, India are currently poised at 110/5 with skipper Virat Kohli and Dinesh Karthik in the middle. Speaking to reporters at the press conference on Friday, England seamer James Anderson admitted that getting the wicket of Kohli, who scored 149 runs in the first innings, is the first priority for England on Saturday.
“We’ll go to bed dreaming about getting Kohli out first thing,” Anderson said at the press conference. “We need five wickets, simple as that, fairly quickly – otherwise, they’ll get the runs,” said Anderson. “We’ve just got to give it everything we’ve got in the morning for the first 15-20 overs – leave absolutely nothing out there. It’s a really exciting place to be because you know we could do something special tomorrow by winning this. It’s such a close Test match,” the 36-year-old added.
The bowler further went on to describe the match as “Test cricket at its best”. “What’s been great is the way the momentum has shifted, Test cricket at its best – the way we dominated the first two sessions of the match, then India wrestled back the momentum, then it was our job to go out and bowl well. To be a part of it is great, and tomorrow we’ve got a really good chance of winning the game,” he said.
He further added that the bowlers will give their all to win it for the home side. “If we recover well tonight and come back fresh in the morning, we know it’s going to be 25-30 overs max one way or the other – so we can give it all we can,” he said.
Anderson further went on to talk about England’s fielding and said that it is one area where the hosts need to improve. “It’s an area where we’ve struggled for two years now,” the bowler said. “The personnel in the team has changed quite a lot, so it’s been difficult to get a set cordon. But we’re just going to have to keep working harder and harder, pushing ourselves to be better, because you can’t keep creating the chances we are and not taking them. You can’t drop Virat Kohli on 21 (Anderson was the bowler) because he’s one of the best players in the world, and he’ll capitalise on that – which he did,” he added.
Anderson said that the team is discussing how to fix the problem and expressed hopes that they will come out of a solution soon. “We’ve spoken about it because of the number of drops in the last two years, maybe even longer. When I was in the team that got to number one in the world, we caught everything. We had an amazing cordon, very fortunate, that was settled. At the minute, we’re struggling a little bit. All we can do is work extremely hard at it, and hope to improve,” he said.