Kohli’s India leave pitches debate in past

Winning a Test match on a good pitch despite losing the toss gave Virat Kohli great satisfaction. India kept England to 283 in the first innings, earned themselves a substantial lead and then kept finding ways to pick up wickets on a surface that posed very little threat to the batsmen in terms of the ball spinning wildly, keeping low or bouncing alarmingly.

“I think it’s exactly been 12 months about us playing on unfair pitches and the question has turned itself,” Kohli said. “So we don’t need to say much about the pitches. We are a team that is focused on playing good cricket to win sessions and situations, or if we are in trouble come back out of those tough situations.”

A lot of the rescue work for India in Mohali was done by the bowlers. R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Jayant Yadav recorded match-turning half-centuries – the first time India’s Nos. 7, 8 and 9 passed 50 in the same Test innings – to help take the first-innings score from 156 for 5 to a massive 417.

“I think the first two days of the game is exactly what the team wants to do as a Test team,” Kohli said. “When you are put in trouble after losing the toss on a good wicket, the bowlers stand up. Then on day two, you are 156 for 5 and then your lower order steps up.”

From a point where they were in danger of conceding a lead, India pulled ahead by 134 runs and with the help of that picked up four wickets to end the third day’s play firming in charge.

Ashwin bowled Alastair Cook through the gate and did Moeen Ali with his dip. Parthiv Patel, playing his first Test in eight years, pulled off a stunning low catch to dismiss the year’s top run-getter, Jonny Bairstow, just before stumps and India …

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