Aggression has been the trademark of his batting and India skipper Virat Kohli teammates will need to embrace a similar strategy to produce results in their exhausting tour of South Africa.
Kohli was at his disruptive best in the second Test against Sri Lanka as he smashed phenomenal innings of 213 off 267 deliveries to help India amass a huge first innings score. Virat’s innings and centuries from Murali Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara, and Rohit Sharma made sure that the hosts had sufficient time in their hands to bowl Sri Lanka out for massive innings and 239 runs win in the Nagpur Test.
During the post-match ceremony, Virat said, “I just wanted to bat the way I bat. Get into good positions and rotate strike and score quickly so our bowlers have time to bowl the opposition out. We will need that (approach) overseas so I was looking at doing that.”
He further elaborated, “I always wanted to better myself in scoring big hundreds for the simple reason that the team benefits. When you lose concentration after a hundred, maybe two wickets can fall quickly. A set batsman can play shots easier than a new batsman so I started thinking in that way and my fitness helps me bat for longer periods.”
Pujara has been a consistent performer for India in the longest format of the game, but it was heartening to see the return of Vijay and Rohit, both of whom smashed tons to give Kohli a happy selection headache for the upcoming matches. He said, “Pujara we know, he’s been very consistent. Vijay was playing after a while, he takes pride in playing Test cricket. I know it hurt him to be out and he came back really well.”
He further added, “Rohit as well, making a strong case for himself in the future. He will always be there when we speak about combinations. We have a lot of Test cricket coming up.”
The Indian skipper didn’t fall back from the appreciation for his bowlers, especially the pacers. He said, “Bhuvi (Bhuvneshwar Kumar) has played a lot of cricket for India in the last few months. Ishant (Sharma), (Mohammad) Shami and Umesh (Yadav) did not play so much. But they bowled a lot of overs in first-class cricket and they always say that’s important for rhythm. Even on this pitch, they were excellent. Although the spinners did a good job for us, Ishant was the standout bowler.”
Kohli was also named as the man-of-the-match for his record-breaking double century, iterated that with no time in hand, the team is taking the ongoing series against Sri Lanka as a training for the tour of South Africa. He said, “We would like to think we want to prepare for South Africa. That’s why we asked for pitches with help for the fast bowlers. This one (Nagpur) deteriorated by the second day. But Kolkata was the ideal wicket.”
