Kohli optimistic about India's chances at Lord's
London, Aug 8 : After going down by a narrow 31-run loss to England in the opening Test at Edgbaston, India skipper Virat Kohli believed that his team is positive going into the second Test at the Lord's, starting Thursday.
Kohli starred in the opening Test, scoring 149 and 51 but fell short of partners as the team succumbed to a narrow loss in the opener of the five-Test rubber.
But the 29-year-old, who rose to his career-best No.1 ICC Test spot after the sterling performance in Birmingham is confident of his No.1 ranked Test team bouncing back in the second match.
"It's not like we're getting rolled over -- every Test match that we're playing is competitive," Kohli said at the pre-match presser on Wednesday.
"I feel as a team we're just about there. We're in the zone where we're very positive," added Kohli, referring to the 95-run win on their last appearance at Lord's four years ago.
India have not won a Test series in England since 2007.
Backing his batsmen to come back in the second game, Kohli said: "Being in the right mindset is a very individual thing."
Asked about his personal achievement of leading from the front when the chips were down in the first innings of the first Test, Kohli said the motivation of leading the country inspires him to perform individually.
"Getting to captain the country, I feel, is an honour and I definitely leave no stones unturned when it comes to that," he said.
Kohli also did not rule out the possibility of India fielding two spinners at Lord's, considering the current hot weather conditions.
"The pitch is going to be, I think, an all-round wicket. When the wicket wears off, the spinners can come into play as well," he said.
"It's a tempting thought to field two spinners but we will have to take a call on that depending on the team balance. It's definitely in contention," he added.
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Mamata continues sit-in for second successive day over Bengal voter roll deletions
Kolkata (PTI): West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee continued her protest against alleged arbitrary deletions in the post-SIR electoral rolls for the second consecutive day on Saturday, after she spent the night at the sit-in site here.
Banerjee had begun the demonstration at Metro Channel in central Kolkata on Friday, accusing the Election Commission of conspiring with the BJP to “disenfranchise Bengal voters” ahead of the upcoming assembly elections.
The chief minister stayed overnight at the protest site, surrounded by senior Trinamool Congress leaders, legislators and party workers, turning the busy Esplanade stretch into a makeshift political camp.
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Addressing supporters on Friday afternoon, Banerjee alleged that large numbers of genuine voters were being removed from the electoral rolls under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
The CM also reiterated her claim that several voters had been "wrongly marked as dead” and said she would present such individuals before the media and the Election Commission to expose what she described as an "attempt to manipulate the voter list to help the BJP in the upcoming assembly polls".
Senior TMC leaders and state ministers remained present at the venue, while party supporters gathered at the protest site in the morning.
The protest comes just days before the full bench of the Election Commission is scheduled to visit West Bengal, amid rising political tensions over the voter list revision ahead of the assembly polls.
According to official data released on February 28, as many as 63.66 lakh names — around 8.3 per cent of the electorate — have been deleted since the SIR process began in November last year, reducing the voter base from about 7.66 crore to just over 7.04 crore.
In addition, over 60.06 lakh electors have been placed under the “under adjudication” category, meaning their eligibility will be determined through legal scrutiny in the coming weeks, a process that could further reshape constituency-level electoral equations.
নাগরিকদের ভোটাধিকার,
— Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) March 6, 2026
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