Kohli ‘would love’ a county stint before 2018 England tour

Virat Kohli has said he would love to play county cricket in the lead-up to the tour of England in 2018, but only a short stint might be possible with current schedules. Kohli wanted at least a month’s time to get used to conditions, but the IPL ends in the last week of May, and India tours to the UK generally start in the last week of June.

“If I have a chance, I would love to do that; love to be there, say a month or a month and a half and get used to playing in those conditions, understand how the wickets behave in that particular phase of the year,” Kohli said. “I think those things matter a lot. Preparation time is something, which is very crucial for any side. So yeah, if I have the opportunity to go there a few days before the start that will be great. I have actually been thinking about it, trying to work out how I can make it happen. Most definitely, if I have the time I’ll go and play there.”

This was a great sign from the captain of a side that had become blasé about the lack of preparation time before Test tours in the recent years. If Kohli manages to squeeze in even a couple of county games before the first Test in 2018 – as opposed to nothing – he would be better equipped to handle the swing and seam prevalent in English grounds. In the 2014 tour, Kohli scored 134 runs at 13.4 in India’s 3-1 defeat.

India have bounced back from that crisis with five successive series wins, but Kohli knew the regrouping won’t be complete, that his side won’t match his ambition, until it did well in certain conditions.

“We still understand we have to play a lot of cricket everywhere in the world,” he said. “It’s not only about this one period we are going through. It looks really good …

continue reading in source www.espncricinfo.com