India vs England will be Fun: Gary Kirsten

Published 05/10/2018, 3:38 PM EDT

Former South Africa player and India’s ICC World Cup winning coach, Gary Kirsten, feels that India’s July tour of England will be highly competitive. The Indian cricket team will square off against England for three Twenty20 Internationals (T20I), three One-Day Internationals (ODI) and five Tests.

The series commences on July 3 and runs until September 11. Kirsten is of the opinion that the battle between the two sides will be great fun to watch. “India-England series will be a competitive series, it will be a good series. It will be great fun watching the battle between two great sides,” Kirsten said.

The South African is also the assistant coach of the Royal Challengers Bangalore for the 11th season of the Indian Premier League. He admitted that he loves working with Virat Kohli and believes that his eagerness to learn and improve, makes him one of the greats of modern day cricket.

“Kohli is a great player. He continues to improve and get better. I enjoy working with him because he wants to learn about his game and all great players do that,” he said.

He even spoke about RCB’s performance in the IPL 2018. The 50-year old said, “It’s my first year with the team, I have really enjoyed the time with the team.”

“It’s very different coaching a franchise team and an international team, but I am not the head coach of the RCB, I am just an assistant coach. So for me to come and assist the team is something which I really enjoyed,” he added.

Moving on to another subject, he spoke about the meteoric rise of T20 cricket and its effect on the traditional format of the game. Kirsten said, “I enjoy T20 cricket. It really appeals to the younger generation. It’s very entertaining, my kids enjoy watching T20 cricket more than anything else.

“Test cricket will always gonna be there. It’s the purest form of the game, people who have grown with Test cricket will always love it. But the only concern I have with Test cricket is outside of England and Australia, the crowds are waning,”.

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Dhruv George is a senior Formula One and NASCAR analyst for EssentiallySports, having authored nearly 12000 articles spanning different sports like F1, NASCAR, Tennis, NFL, and eSports. He graduated with a PG Diploma in Journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications. Dhruv has also conducted interviews with F1 driver Pierre Gasly and Moto2 rider Tony Arbolino.