After seeing Virat Kohli’s lone hand in both innings of the first Test at Birmingham, England would look to apply more pressure on the rest of Indian batting line-up so that the Indian captain crumbles, revealed England head coach Trevor Bayliss.


Known as a master strategist, it did not take much time for Bayliss to realize India’s heavy dependence on Kohli to bail them out of trouble in the testing English conditions. Kohli accounted for more than 45% of India’s runs in the first Test match and looked the best by some distance. While the rest of the Indian batsmen struggled to cope with the moving duke ball, Kohli found a method of his own – sometimes standing outside the crease, sometimes getting a big stride forward to cover for the swing – to score runs. Kohli's superlative performance helped him take over the No. 1 spot from former Australian captain Steve Smith in the Test match rankings.


"If Virat Kohli is not the best batsman (in the world), he's very close to it. The way he played the first and second innings was high-class stuff. If we can put pressure on the other batsmen in the Indian team, that's going to add to the pressure on him," said Bayliss.


With scores of 149 and 51 in the first Test, the Indian captain buried the ghosts of 2014 and has given early indications of dominating the five-match Test series.


"In this first Test, the four innings had wickets falling left, right and centre, all batsmen were in trouble, even Kohli, who I don't think was all that comfortable early on. It was difficult to bat, probably more difficult than it looked from outside," he added.


Bayliss said he expects the Indian team to learn quickly from the mistakes committed while tackling the moving ball just as his team would look to address its weak handling of spin, in the remaining four matches of the series.


"India are a very good team. We're very much in the hunt here. When the ball's moving, we've shown that a few of their guys do struggle against the moving ball. I'm sure that they'll be going away working out how they can play it as we're going working on how to play the off-spin," he added.


England have made two changes - Chris Woakes has made comeback in place of Stokes and young Ollie Pope has earned his maiden call-up in place of an out-of-form Dawid Malan - in their squad for the second Test match at Lord's which will begin from August 9.