Ollie Pope reveals Kohli's spinning tracks warning during first Test

England batsman Ollie Pope has revealed that Virat Kohli warned him of turning pitches in the series, midway through the first India-England Test in Chennai.

This Test was the only one in the 4-match series where England batsmen looked comfortable at the crease. On a track that offered negligible assistance to bowlers on the first two days, the visitors notched a mammoth 578, thanks to Joe Root’s double ton. The visitors won the Test by 227 runs to take a surprise lead in the series.

During a media interaction on Friday, Ollie Pope recounted feeling apprehensive about the next three games after the Indian captain’s ‘last flat wicket’ of the series warning.

“In the second innings, the pitch started spinning quite a lot. I remember standing at the non-striker’s end and Kohli came up to me and said ‘this is the last of the flat wickets’. At that point, I knew it was probably going to be quite a challenging rest of the series from a batting point of view,” said Ollie Pope.

Virat Kohli’s words proved prophetic, as the next two Tests were played on raging rank turners, and English batsmen failed to score even 170 across four innings. The pitch for the final Test didn’t produce a sharp turn, but the English batsmen lost wickets against straight deliveries while playing for turn.

Ollie Pope, who struggled a lot against the likes of R Ashwin and Axar Patel throughout the tour, said even the team’s senior-most players found the conditions some of the ‘toughest’ they have ever faced.