India’s underwhelming batting performance in the first innings gave England the decisive advantage, skipper Virat Kohli said on Tuesday and defended the decision to play rookie left-arm spinner Shahbaz Nadeem instead of a more experienced Kuldeep Yadav.
After losing the first Test by 227 runs, Kohli admitted that the team was always under the scoreboard pressure after England’s mammoth first innings total of 578 but also said that he has no regrets about picking Nadeem over Kuldeep.
“I think, Test probably shifted in their favour when we batted in the first innings. We were looking to bat better but I don’t think there was enough application shown by us as a batting unit,” Kohli said at the post-match press conference referring to India’s 337 all-out first essay score.
“Even if someone got a hundred in either innings, still we were pretty much behind in the game. There’s no one way to play the game and we understand that quite well and our endeavour in the…