Everyone wants to play against a player like Virat Kohli: Ashton Agar

Australia “A” all-rounder Ashton Agar said his side is excited about taking on India Test skipper Virat Kohli when he turns up for India “A” in the final four-day cricket match starting in Chennai on Wednesday but insisted that there is no specific plan to tackle the star batsman. India Test skipper is set to play in the match, using it as a much-needed practice before the upcoming tour of Sri Lanka.

India “A” already have five players in their squad who have been selected for the Test series – KL Rahul, Amit Mishra and Umesh Yadav, Varun Aaron besides skipper Cheteshwar Pujara. In fact, the captains of India A and Australia A termed the first match track as one which was hard to bat on, spin friendly and that the competition between bat and ball was lost. It was a great experience because he played against me there. They can talk to Virat and learn from him. “Virat can share his ideas and it will be a good platform for them”, said Pujara. “I is probably not diving within the area however every thing else is okay”, the web site additional reported.

India A: Cheteshwar Pujara(c), Abhinav Mukund, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Naman Ojha(w), Karun Nair, Baba Aparajith, Abhimanyu Mithun, Pragyan Ojha, Vijay Shankar, Varun Aaron, Amit Mishra, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Gopal. Pujara also confirmed that he will open the batting in Rahul’s absence. If that were to be the case, Baba Aparajith and Shreyas Gopal would also be in the fray.

The Saurashtra batsman was happy with his game and promised to do better.

Pujara hoped to have a better pitch for the second “Test” after expressing his displeasure at what was presented last week. “We are looking forward to the match”. But for that to happen – O’Keefe had match figures of 8 for 163 in the first game and should keep his pace – they might choose to play only two frontline pacers, a sensible ploy in Chennai anyway. As for his assessment of the wicket for Wednesday’s game, the 24-year-old Agar, who has played in two Test matches for Australia, said, “To be honest, I have no knowledge on assessing wickets”. We focus somewhat bit on the opposition, however we give attention to ourselves extra. I am not sure about how the wicket will be behaving tomorrow. “The wicket was slow and it was hard for both batsmen and bowlers”. Kohli’s inclusion in the squad has added spice to the series. But more crucial would be the performances of the players on the two sides who have realistic chances of making their respective national teams. Kohli’s place in the XI will come at the expense of Rahul, who got a good exposure in the drawn first “Test” last week in which he made 96 and 29.

Australia A XI: Usman Khawaja(c), Cameron Bancroft, Joe Burns, Peter Handscomb, Callum Ferguson, Marcus Stoinis, Matthew Wade(w), Ashton Agar, Steve O’Keefe, Gurinder Sandhu, Andrew Fekete.