India captain Virat Kohli accepts Australian challenge; Tim Paine, are you listening?

Mumbai: In November 2019, Australia Test captain Tim Paine had taken a dig at India skipper Virat Kohli over day/night Tests. Now, the Indian batsman has given his reply to his counterpart.

During India’s previous tour to Australia, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had been reluctant to play the pink ball Test. Now, Kohli has declared that the team is ready to play anyone and anywhere in the world in the pink ball contest.

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India are set to travel Down Under later this year. Australia are hoping to host India in a day/night Test and Kohli has given his green signal which Paine had been waiting for.

“We played the day/night Test here (India). We are happy with how it went. It has become a very exciting feature of any Test series. We are absolutely open to play a day and night Test. We are ready and up for the challenge. Whether it is the Gabba (Brisbane) or Perth, it doesn’t matter to us,” Kohli said on Monday (January 13), on the eve of the opening ODI between India and Australia.

“We do have the skill sets as a team now to compete against anyone in the world anywhere, in any format of the game whether it is white ball, red ball, pink ball,” the skipper added.

India and Australia will play three ODIs starting tomorrow (January 14) in Mumbai.

Paine, in November 2019, had said, “We'll certainly try and we'll have to run that by Virat (Kohli). We'll get an answer from him at some stage I'm sure. That's where (Gabba) we like to start our summer and it has been for a long long time except for last summer.

“As I said we'll ask Virat and see if we can get his permission to play here and maybe even get a Pink-ball Test if he's in a good mood. So we'll wait and see.”

India's first-ever pink ball Test was played at Kolkata's Eden Gardens in November 2019. India routed Bangladesh inside three days.

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