India vs England 2016, 5th Test, day 4 - 5 Talking Points

#1 Are India placing too much emphasis on personal milestones?

Kohli’s action seems to have contradicted his own words

“One thing that I really wanted the team to do was express themselves in Test matches and not think about personal performances. Because, a lot of the times, you have an hour in the Test match where you can take the game away and you are still not willing to go for it because you are close to your milestone or things like that. These are the things that we have gotten out of our system completely.”

Those were Kohli’s exact words at the conclusion of the previous Test in Mumbai. Exactly a week later, the skipper’s decision to delay the declaration in order to accommodate Nair’s triple ton remains a highly debatable one.

While there could still be sufficient time to enforce a result and finish with a 4-0 score line, India might just have missed out on an opportunity to make a bold statement as well as put the England openers under relentless pressure.