WTC Final: Virat Kohli among Team India players leaving for England on Tuesday morning

Virat Kohli, along with teammate Mohammad Siraj, will depart for the highly anticipated World Test Championship (WTC) final against Australia in London in the early hours on Tuesday.

The departure comes shortly after their team, Royal Challengers Bangalore, was knocked out of the IPL. Joining them on the flight will be spinners R Ashwin and Axar Patel, all-rounder Shardul Thakur, and the team's support staff led by Rahul Dravid.

Completing the first group of players are Kolkata Knight Riders' pacer Umesh Yadav and Lucknow Super Giants' Jaydev Unadkat, who is recovering from a shoulder injury.

According to a BCCI source, there will be two or three batches of departures, with the first group leaving at 4:30 am on Tuesday. The remaining seven players, including skipper Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja, Ishan Kishan, Shubman Gill, Mohammad Shami, K S Bharat, and Ajinkya Rahane, will stay back in India for the IPL playoffs.

Cheteshwar Pujara is already in England playing county cricket and will join the squad in London. However, there will be no warm-up game for the Indian team since the English County Championship is underway, and the ECB is not obliged to arrange practice matches for the visiting team due to it being an ICC event.

A BCCI source mentioned that playing against a select county XI wouldn't provide quality practice as it would primarily consist of second-team or development squad players, as the first-team players are not released during the championship.

While the majority of the Indian players will enter the title clash after two months of IPL, only three Australians bound for the WTC final participated in the league. Last week, Ricky Ponting commented on the mental preparedness of the Australian team, stating that they haven't been playing much cricket but might be mentally better prepared, while Indian players have valuable game time behind them.

India, who were runners-up in 2021, will be eager to claim their first ICC trophy in a decade. The World Test Championship final begins on June 7.

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