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Focus on winning as Kohli-led India land in Bangladesh

June 08, 2015

India's Test captain Virat Kohli. Photograph: Ashikur Rahman/Reuters

It's the beginning of a new cricketing season for Team India, who will look to face opponents head-on.

Keeping that positive attitude in mind, the Virat Kohli-led Indian cricket squad arrived in Dhaka on Monday for a short series against Bangladesh, featuring a one-off Test that begins on Wednesday followed by three One-day Internationals.

The 14-man side flew in from Kolkata, where it had assembled for a brief camp before the series.

The Test at Fatullah will be Kohli's first as full-time captain after Mahendra Singh Dhoni abruptly retired from Tests during the tour of Australia.

Cheteshwar Pujara, Harbhajan Singh and Bhuvaneswar Kumar address a press conference on Sunday, the eve of their departure to Bangladesh. Photograph: BCCI/Twitter

Opener K L Rahul, originally named in the Test squad, was ruled out with fever and the management decided against his replacement.

Off-spinner Harbhajan Singh returns to the squad after playing his last international match in March 2013.

India have won six Tests out of the seven they have played against Bangladesh with one turning out to be a draw.

All the five-day games have been played in Bangladesh and the last time two teams met in a bilateral series was in 2009-10 when India won 2-0.

Young skipper Kohli has already made his team's intentions clear when he stated that his team's sole focus would be on getting the results.

"I think it's time, we have played enough Tests so that we start executing our skills and getting results our way and have the vision and focus to win Test matches, and not just go out there with the mindset of learning with every game.

"Obviously, you learn about the game every day, you learn from watching on TV [television] as well. We have been playing for long enough now. Unless we want to have a vision of winning Test matches, executing our skills against the best in the world, we are falling short of the goals that we want to achieve. We know what we want to achieve as a unit, it is just the mental thing that has to be right. We have learnt in the past few Tests and months but starting now, we want to start achieving the results that we really want, not go away from every Test match thinking about what we have learnt from it," he said on Sunday.

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