England vs India: Our success against other Indian batsmen will put extra pressure on Virat Kohli, says Trevor Bayliss

Head coach Trevor Bayliss feels that if England can continue their success against the other Indian batsmen, Virat Kohli is bound to fall under pressure.

If Virat Kohli is not the best batsman (in the world), he’s very close to it. The way he played the first and second innings was high-class stuff. If we can put pressure on the other batsmen in the Indian team, that’s going to add to the pressure on him,” Bayliss said on Monday.

“I don’t think it’s any different for us. We’ve got a few guys who are not necessarily cemented in the team and that put extra pressure on people like Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow.”

Kohli was a class apart from the rest Indian batsmen as he smashed a brilliant 149 and followed it up with another half-century in the first Test against England at Edgbaston which India lost by 31 runs. No other batsmen from the subcontinent could even come close to scoring a 50, with the next best score being 31, which Hardik Pandya scored in the second innings.

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Wickets were falling at regular intervals as both teams found it difficult to cope up with the bowling friendly pitch.

“In this first Test, the four innings had wickets falling left, right and center all batsmen were in trouble, even Kohli, who I don’t think was all that comfortable early on. It was difficult to bat, probably more difficult than it looked from outside,” added the former Kolkata Knight Riders coach.

He, however, expects the struggling batsmen of both the teams to quickly learn from their mistakes and bounce back in the Test series, which Bayliss days, might go down to the wire.

“India are a very good team. We’re very much in the hunt here. When the ball’s moving, we’ve shown that a few of their guys do struggle against the moving ball. I’m sure that they’ll be going away working out how they can play it as we’re going working on how to play the off-spin,” he said.

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England though will be missing first match hero Ben Stokes who with a fiery bowling-spell in the second innings led the hosts to a victory. Bayliss, however, feels that Chris Woakes who will replace the all-rounder in the second Test is a good competitor.

“Chris was fine here. We had him bowling in the nets. One of the first practice days here, he bowled 14 overs in the nets. He’s gone back and played a couple of T20 games and back into match mode. Fitness wise he should be fine.”

England, who lead the five-match Test series 1-0 have also included Oliver Pope in-place of Dawid Malan in the playing XI. And when asked if adding another left-hander to the batting-order is a grave mistake given how the English left-handed batsmen found it difficult to play Ravichandran Ashwin, the head coach said that this was the best team.

“We’re not going to pick a second-best team because they’re all right-handers,” he said. “Certainly, with Ashwin bowling so well to all batsmen but obviously to the left-handers, we’ll have to have a bit of a chat and see how we might be able to play him a little different.”

Another concern for England has been their slip catching, with Malan dropping Kohli twice in the opening innings and Murali Vijay in the second essay. Bayliss acknowledged that it was indeed something to ponder upon and the team is working on it.