NEW DELHI: The Indian cricket team held yet another extensive training session at Chepauk in Chennai on Monday in preparation for the first Test against Bangladesh, starting September 19.
All 16 squad members participated in the session. The team resumed their training after a day off, marking their third session since arriving last week.
Virat Kohli and Yashasvi Jaiswal were among the first to hit the nets, practicing against Jasprit Bumrah and R Ashwin.
Captain Rohit Sharma, along with Shubman Gill and Sarfaraz Khan, who has joined from the Duleep Trophy match in Anantapur, was part of the next set of batters. Rohit focused on facing spinners, considering Bangladesh's slow bowlers.
Ravindra Jadeja, Rishabh Pant and Mohammed Siraj also practiced with local bowlers and received plenty of throwdowns on a practice pitch that offered decent bounce.
India have two more practice sessions planned before the Test series opener.
Bangladesh come into the series confident after a sweep in Pakistan.
The likely playing eleven will include three spinners and two pacers on the spin-friendly Chennai pitch.
Ashwin, Jadeja, and Kuldeep Yadav are the expected spinners, with Bumrah and Siraj handling the pace attack.
Axar Patel may not play despite his good performances while Pant is set to return to Test cricket after nearly two years, resulting in Dhruv Jurel being benched.
Virat's team wins catching competition
Fielding coach T Dilip was impressed with the intensity of the unit despite punishing Chennai weather which is humid all the year round.
"Today, whole session idea was to get everyone together for a team drill with two segments to it. First is competition taking humidity into account, we made sure that volume is less but intensity is more," Dilip told bcci.tv after the session.
He then explained the training module.
"We split teams into two groups and made some competition in catching and the team that made less number of errors won. It was Virat's team that won today," he informed.
Dilip, the only support staff from the Rahul Dravid's team, who is part of Gautam Gambhir's entourage, also spoke about players coping extreme weather and giving it their all during the session.
"We split two batches -- bowlers and all-rounders split into two stations, where outfield and in-field catching was taken care of along with attacking ground fielding.
"The second group was standard batting group for slip cordon catching and also short-leg, silly point with some reflex catching," Dilip explained.
He seemed pleased with the effort put in by Rohit Sharma's men.
"Overall, I feel it was a fantastic session, considering hot overhead sun and getting used to it but one great part about this team is throughout all stations, the intensity was top notch in this weather," Dilip concluded.
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