On the back of a resounding victory in the second Test match, Kohli and his boys will look to repeat a similar performance to beat Sri lanka and win the three-match series in the process here on Saturday.
India will have more initiative to win or atleast draw the final match as it will help them equal the record of most consecutive Test series victories. With the Men in Blue on a run of eight-consecutive series victories, they will look to equal Australia and England's record of nine successive series wins.
Moreover the match at the Feroz Shah Kotla will be the last home Test match for India in a long while.
Post lanka series, Ravi Shastri-coached side will face South Africa in a three-Test series. It will be followed by two more difficult away Test tours. India will play five Test matches in England and four more in Australia at the back-end of 2018.
It will undoubtedly be the most difficult test in Kohli's tenure as India's captain. Those series will define the character of the young Indian side.
Hence, the Kotla Test will be the final chance for the high-flying Indian side to work on their weaknesses and get their strategies sorted out.
One such problem the team management will be looking to sort out will be the opening combination.
Indian batsmen endured a horrid time in the first innings of the opening Test. But, Shikhar Dhawan and Kl Rahul bounced back with scores of 94 and 79 respectively in the second innings.
With Dhawan being absent from the second match, Murali Vijay made the most of it with an impressive score of 128.
Now with Dhawan returning to the side, Kohli will be in a difficult situation to drop one of the three. It might a big surprise if the skipper does manage to fit all three in the starting eleven.
Moreover, it will be interesting to see what kind of pitch India will have at Kotla on Saturday. Even before the lanka tour, all the talks were about India trying to prepare bouncy tracks to help the players cope with the South African pitches. The Kolkata track in the first Test did seem a bit like that, but the Nagpur wicket looked more like a flat one.
The last time a Test match was played in the National Capital was in 2015 — when the match went till the final session of the fifth day.
With South Africa trying to play out a draw, Ravichandran Ashwin (5/61) and Umesh Yadav (3/9) helped India win the match by 337 runs.
However, it will be difficult to see the struggling Sri lankan batsmen taking the match down the wire.
The likes of lahiru Thirimanne, Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal and Niroshan Dickwella have failed to live up to the expectations and have struggled to produce runs on consistent basis to help the Island nation dish out a sustainable challenge to the hosts.
lanka head coach Nic Pothas would look to see some kind of momentum from their batsmen to help them make a game out of the final Test.
The absence of star-spinner Rangana Herath will only make their task even more tougher in the bowling department. Hence the burden will be on off-spinner Dilruwan Perera to cause trouble to the Indian batsmen. The likes of Suranga lakmal, Dasun Shanaka and lahiru Gamage will look to be at their best to keep the star Indian batting line-up at bay.
As far as India is concerned, Rahane will look to repeat his performances from the last visit to Kotla in 2015. In both the innings he scored centuries and will be looking for a similar kind of an impact in the final Test after struggling to put runs on board so far in the two matches of this series. The bowling line-up will depend on the combination captain Kohli decides for the Final Test. If he decides to stick with the same combination of the Nagpur match, fielding four bowlers, then he might be left with a difficult choice of dropping one of Ishant Sharma or Mohammed Shami.
Delhi lad Sharma returned to the starting eleven for the second Test and picked up five wickets. However, with Shami, having missed the second Test due to a hamstring problem, returning to the squad, it will be interesting to see how the skipper manages his bowling combination.
Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja will be the main spin threat, while Yadav will look to spearhead the pace attack.
With this being the last home Test for India this season, the hosts will look to make the most of this opportunity.