Days before the start of the two-match Test series between India and South Africa, star batter Virat Kohli reportedly returned home to attend to a family emergency.
Kohli isn’t part of the ongoing three-day intra-squad match which is being played in Pretoria. He took permission from the team management to fly back to Mumbai three days back.
According to a report in Cricbuzz, there’s no clarity over what the emergency is but Kohli will be back in South Africa on December 22 (Friday).
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Kohli was rested from the white-ball leg of the South Africa tour that saw India take on South Africa in a three-match T20I series followed by three ODIs.
The T20I series ended 1-1 with the first match being washed out due to rain.
India clinched the three-match ODI series 2-1 with Sanju Samson hitting a maiden century in the decider played at Boland Park in Paarl on Thursday. Arshdeep Singh was the star of the series, finishing with 10 wickets including a maiden five-wicket haul.
Kohli hasn’t played any competitive cricket since India’s defeat in the final of the 2023 ODI World Cup. He finished with a record-breaking 765 runs from 11 matches, the most by any batter in a single edition of the tournament and also won the player-of-the-tournament award.
Alongside captain Rohit Sharma, Kohli will be making his India return with the two-Test series in South Africa scheduled to start from December 26 in Centurion.
The series is part of the ongoing ICC World Test Championship cycle.
India have never won a Test series on South African soil and are hopeful of creating history this time around.
On their last tour of the country in 2021-22, they took a 1-0 lead in the three-match series before losing 1-2.
India started their WTC campaign with the West Indies tour earlier this year, beating their hosts 1-0 in a two-match series.
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