'Virat is one of world's best, he'll be desperate to prove a point,' says Joe Root ahead of 2nd Test

England have announced their 12-men squad for the second Test against India starting on Saturday in Chennai. The visitors have made four changes to their line-up with three of their frontline bowlers set to miss the game. While star pacer Jofra Archer will miss the game after receiving an injection in his right elbow, the other three players missing the game will be wicketkeeper-batsman Jos Buttler, who has flown back home and the bowlers Dom Bess and James Anderson.

Answering a DNA query during the pre-match press conference on how to tackle his Indian counterpart, Virat Kohli, after he came good with a 72-run knock in the second innings of the first Test, Root said, "We know he's a good player, he's gonna score runs at some point in this tour. We've just got to keep him as quiet as we can. I think we went about it brilliantly in that first innings. Bessie (Dom Bess) produced a brilliant delivery to get rid of him.

In the first innings of the first Test, Dom Bess got Virat Kohli to play at a turning delivery as he could score only 11 runs, before coming good with a determined knock in the second when the wickets were falling around him.

Among the incoming players, there's spin all-rounder Moeen Ali, who has played with him in the Indian Premier League (IPL) at the RCB and the pacer with 500-plus wickets in the longest format, Stuart Broad. 

Talking about the same, "Moeen's played a lot of cricket with him, spent time with him obviously in the IPL as well. But ultimately, we've just got to keep delivering our best balls time and time again, keep trying to challenge his defense as often as possible and try and build pressure on him.

"We know he's one of the world's best players and he'll be desperate to prove a point this week. But what an exciting challenge for our bowling group! To have already seen that we've dismissed him once early in the series, can we do it again? Can we collectively find ways of trying to restrict their whole batting group but big players like Virat?" 

Among the ins, is also the all-rounder Chris Woakes and fast bowler Ollie Stone, with Ben Foakes taking the gloves. Asked about the thought process behind getting two all-rounders in Moeen and Woakes in place of two pure bowlers in Bess and Anderson, Root mentioned that they are not losing out on the balance with whichever combination they go for.

"We can have the same balanced side in terms of straight like for like swaps with Stone and Broad coming in for Archer and Anderson or Woakes could come into things as well, which adds to the batting and obviously give us a huge amount of control with the ball, " he added.

England leads the series 1-0 going into the second Test at the same venue after they beat the home side comprehensively in the first Test by 227 runs. While, the hosts will be desperate to come back into the series, especially given the importance the three Tests hold for India's chances of qualification for the World Test Championship (WTC) final.