India began its preparations for the two-match Test series against Bangladesh at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium on Friday.
The opening game commences here at Chepauk on September 19, and it will kickstart a winter of gruelling schedule in the longest format for Rohit Sharma’s men.
In the next four months, India will play ten matches against three opponents and look to seal its third straight World Test Championship final berth.
After the second Test against Bangladesh in Kanpur, India will host New Zealand for a three-match series next month. In November, the team will travel to Australia for five Tests as it chases a hat-trick of series victories Down Under and also retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy it has held since 2017.
The whole squad, barring Sarfaraz Khan – who is playing in the Duleep Trophy – sweated it out in the middle for close to five hours under the watchful eyes of the coaching staff.
Newly appointed bowling coach and former South African pacer Morne Morkel had his first day in the office and keenly observed the session throughout the day.
In the morning session, Rohit, Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and Shubman Gill got going, batting on the practice pitches on either side of the main square. Later, Ravindra Jadeja and R. Ashwin joined in for a lengthy session in the middle after their bowling stints.
Similarly, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj also worked on sharpening their batting skills, spending more than half an hour in the middle.
There were close to 12 net bowlers, including mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy and Tamil Nadu left-arm spinners S. Ajith Ram and M. Siddharth. The pacers included domestic players like Arpit Guleria, Gurnoor Brar, Yudhvir Singh, Vaibhav Arora and Simarjeet Singh.
One of the practice pitches was of a black soil type with quite pronounced footmarks. The spinners operated primarily on this strip, while the pacers bowled predominantly on the red soil surface at the other side of the square.
In the afternoon session, the second batch of K.L. Rahul, Dhruv Jurel, Rishabh Pant and Axar Patel took to the middle, while pacers Yash Dayal and Akash Deep bowled with Morkel keeping a keen eye on them.
Bangladesh travels to India following a historic 2-0 sweep of Pakistan earlier this month in the latter’s backyard and will look to give the hosts a stiff challenge.
