Kumble not worried about spinners' form

In Rajkot, England's spinners took more wickets and conceded fewer runs than India's. That too on a pitch that did not take too much turn until the final day. Visakhapatnam appears likely to provide a lot more assistance to the slow bowlers and there was a notion that home advantage may backfire on the home team. India coach Anil Kumble did not share this notion.

"The fact that they took more wickets than India's spinners in Rajkot doesn't mean that a spin-friendly pitch here will be a disadvantage for us," he said on Tuesday.

Last week at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Ground, R Ashwin had to settle for only three wickets in 69.3 overs and Amit Mishra conceded upwards of four runs per over in both innings. Both, however, had to bowl their first-innings overs when the pitch was at its flattest. It had a curiously slow rate of deterioration as well, prompting Ashwin to change his bowling action in the second innings in an attempt to make balls rip off the deck.

But those memories, as well as those of their fourth-innings wobble, when they lost six wickets in 52.3 overs while batting to save the Test, seem to be firmly in the past for India, at least according to Kumble.

"I don't like to read too much into that batting that happened in those 70 overs," he said. "If you look at that, probably if [Cheteshwar] Pujara had taken the DRS, probably it would have been 170 for 1 and probably people would have focussed more on the pitch."

Bolstering that belief were the positives Kumble had seen over the five days in Rajkot. Pujara and M Vijay struck battling hundreds and Ashwin compensated for his lack of wickets with two important knocks in the lower middle order. The first of them ensured England's first-innings lead was kept to 49 and limited the time they could give their bowlers in the final innings.

"It was a performance where I thought it was a good batting surface and there were six centuries - two from us and four from the English batsmen," Kumble said. "It was a good Test match but unfortunately we couldn't get a result."

Kumble also made special mention of India's fast bowlers who were able to find reverse-swing when it looked like none of England's could.

"Both [Mohammed] Shami and Umesh [Yadav] bowled exceptionally well on that surface. They got it to reverse as well and they troubled all the English batsmen.

"I think all our fast bowlers have been doing well and we will continue to try and see how we can ensure we put together a plan to pick up 20 wickets,"

An area that India know they need to improve, though, is their catching. They dropped three chances in the first half-hour in Rajkot, which contributed to their having to chase the game for the rest of its duration.

"It's just that the one area where we certainly probably let ourselves down was our catching and this team really prides itself in its fielding and its catching," Kumble said. "That's something that we are obviously aware of, going into this Test match."