Former Australia speedster Glenn McGrath has recently said that Virat Kohli's absence will affect India's winning chances in the upcoming Test series against Australia as he believes the India captain is 'worth two players'. Notably, Kohli will miss the last three Tests of the tour as he will return to India for the birth of his first child with his wife Anushka Sharma.

McGrath also claimed that India’s Test specialist Cheteshwar Pujara might not have as much of an impact as he hasn’t played a lot of cricket this year so far.

"It will impact the series," McGrath said in a media interaction. "The player of his quality and class, for India to lose him in three out of four Tests is a big blow. It will be for the other players to step up. I can totally understand him wanting to go back for his first child’s birth.”

"Kohli is worth two players; one, as a batsman and two, as the captain, setting the field with his energy and attitude. Australia would want to dominate the series and level the ledger. They have Smith and Warner back," he again added.

Notably, Pujara had amassed 521 runs in four matches during the last tour, including three centuries as well. Since, he wasn’t a part of the IPL 2020, he will be coming off a long COVID-19 imposed break.

"The thing he did so well last time was that he occupied the crease. He spent time in the middle just batting. He is a kind of batsman who doesn’t feel pressure when not scoring runs. That’s unique in the modern era where there are batsmen who would want to score runs after one maiden over. Pujara doesn’t have that mindset. That helped him last time, allowed him to get a lot of time and just compile runs," McGrath said.

"The fact that he hasn’t spent time in the middle, hasn’t had lot of long batting time, is going to have a big impact. He will probably have to work harder this series than the last one as he hasn’t played any cricket," he concluded.