Sri Lanka Vs India 2017: Virat Kohli Reveals Openers For Galle Test

With both the first choice openers-Murali Vijay and KL Rahul not available for the opening Test against Sri Lanka, captain Virat Kohli, on Tuesday (July 25), made it clear that Team India would include two specialist openers in the playing eleven instead of experimenting with any middle-order batsman.

Vijay, who is on the sidelines since the last Test against Australia in March, pulled out of the tour after speaking to the selectors that he had not fully recovered from his wrist injury. On the other hand, Rahul, who returned to action in the two-day warm up game, has been ruled out of the first match due to viral fever.

Abhinav Mukund was picked in the team as the backup opener while Shikhar Dhawan replaced Vijay. And considering Mukund and Dhawan’s form in Tests, there were speculations that the team might go in with a new combination but Kohli dismissed it.

Dhawan has not played a Test since being ruled out of the New Zealand series in October last year while Mukund, after failing to perform in the Bengaluru Test against Australia, got out for a duck in the two-day practise tie. But despite that Kohli confirmed that the team would go in with two specialist openers and completely ruled out any possibility of trying out Rohit Sharma as an opener.

“No,no no Rohit has never opened in Test cricket and we don’t see that kind of experiment happening here. We have specialist openers in the team and they will obviously be starting this game. KL unfortunately is down with flu. Luckily it is not very serious so he just needs a few days to recover from that,” he said in his pre-match conference.

“KL is a very established player for us and he has done really well in the past couple of years for us in all formats. These kinds of scenarios present other players in the team with an opportunity to step up,” he added.

The first match of the four-match series will start on July 26 at Galle.