Virat Kohli intends to put team before self during the two-month tour of England that begins in Manchester on Tuesday evening despite the intrigue that surrounds how the India captain will address one of the few gaps in an otherwise stellar CV.

Such has been Kohli’s resolve to right the wrongs of four years ago, when he averaged 13.8 during India’s 3-1 Test defeat on these shores, that he arranged a month-long spell playing for Surrey in June, only for a neck injury to scupper this planned acclimatisation.

The club have since screamed to the top of the County Championship – “Who needed Virat Kohli with the bat when you have 20 year old Ryan Patel with the ball [?]” tweeted their chairman, Richard Thompson, recently – while the player is relaxed about missing out, given that the ongoing heatwave negated the damp conditions he had hoped to face.

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Asked about his personal goals for the tour, which begins here with the first of three Twenty20s before three one-dayers and five Tests, Kohli replied: “It doesn’t matter whether I get runs or don’t. What I want is the team to play well and win.

“You want to perform as an individual but I haven’t set any benchmarks or targets or come here to do certain things, which have to be special, just because the last tour here didn’t go well. That’s always my mindset for the time I have been captain.”

It was Jimmy Anderson, seen testing out his shoulder injury on Monday afternoon, who queried how Kohli will fare this summer after a dominant display during the 2016 Test series in India, stating that “any technical deficiencies he’s got aren’t in play out here” in reference to pace, carry and lateral movement.

Before thoughts turn to Kohli versus the seaming red Duke ball in August come six limited-overs internationals, with England facing arguably the greatest ever when it comes to facing the white Kookaburra. Their captain, Eoin Morgan, said: “I’m not sure I have the answer” when asked if there is a bigger challenge in world cricket.

Kohli’s 35 ODI hundreds are more than three times the current best Englishman – Joe Root with 11 – and second only to Sachin Tendulkar’s 49 – but India, who beat Ireland in two T20s last week, are more than their galáctico captain and certainly tougher opposition than the Australian team who were whipped six times.

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Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma are two aggressive, in-form openers, the wily MS Dhoni continues behind the stumps, Bhuvneshwar Kumar is a probing right-armer who should enjoy English conditions, while the wrist-spinners, Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav, provide wicket-taking threat in the middle overs.

There is some familiarity and not just through international cricket, with 12 England players, including eight in the current squad, having turned out in this year’s Indian Premier League. Kohli expects this to raise the cricketing quality and, perhaps, to avoid past acrimony, such as the spat between Anderson and Ravi Jadeja in 2014.

Kohli, who also gave a nod to Jos Buttler’s remarkable IPL form in anticipation of his expected deployment as an opener on Tuesday , said: “Because England haven’t played so much IPL cricket [previously], there was never that familiarity or that sort of warmth between the two teams. This season has broken that barrier to a great extent.

“It is going to make you improve your game even more. You can’t stick to what you’ve been doing for long because the [opposition] knows you now. So you’re going to stay ahead of the game – it is going to take the standard of the cricket up.”

England (probable): Roy, Buttler, Hales, Root, Morgan (c), Bairstow, Moeen, Willey, Plunkett, Rashid, Jordan India (possible): Dhawan, Sharma, Kohli (c), Raina, Dhoni (wk), Pandey, H Pandya, Bhuvneshwar, U Yadav, K Yadav, Chahal