Advice from seniors helped: Virat
First Published : 09 Jun 2011, 17:16
Last Modified : 29 Nov 2011, 11:46
Trinidad, June 8: Virat Kohli earned the Man-of-the-Match award for his knock of 81 as India beat the West Indies in the second ODI here at the Queen’s Park Oval, Port of Spain. Batting at No 3, Kohli anchored the Indian innings in a game that was curtailed due to rain. In the process, he become the second fastest Indian, after Navjot Singh Sidhu and former captain Sourav Ganguly, to reach 2000 ODI runs. While the duo reached the landmark in 52 innings, Kohli took 53 innings to get there.
Excerpts from Kohli’s post-match media-interaction
On whether he enjoyed his innings
It was pretty good. In the last game I played loose shot and was disappointed with myself. But I picked it up in this game and was determined to score some runs. On this kind of wicket it becomes slower in the second half so we needed some kind of batting effort. Parthiv [Patel] played amazingly and we had a big partnership upfront and that really set the course for us.
On the difficulty of batting on the Queen’s Park Oval wicket
You need to adjust quickly. It’s all about using the pace of the ball rather than forcing the shots which I did in the last game. I spoke to a few senior players as well who have played here before and they suggested, [that I] use the pace of the ball early on and just get the odd boundary in between. That’s how I planned my innings today. I think on slow wickets you need to use the pace more rather than forcing a shot because you tend to get frustrated when you hit the fielder early on trying to hit the ball too hard. It’s all about placing the ball in the gaps and picking up the odd boundary in between.
On reaching 2000 runs in ODI cricket
The last one, one-and-a-half years has gone well for me and I have worked really hard on my batting. I have started to enjoy my batting a lot more rather than putting pressure on myself and I think that has been the key for me in the last one year. It’s a good feeling to get to 2000 runs. It’s a little milestone for me but I would surely like to continue this way and take responsibility of [the] team with me at any point of time.
