It all happened in a flash on Day 3. Steve Smith got to a hundred, steered his team to a mammoth second innings lead to set India a target of 441. The Indian batsmen walked out to the middle and succumbed to yet another Steve O’Keefe special. The result – India were bundled out for 107, a defeat by a margin of 333 runs. Captain Virat Kohli though didn’t feel the need to mull over the loss, instead he vowed that his side would comeback stronger in the 2nd Test.
“It’s fine. It is just another international game, it’s no big deal,” Virat said. “We played good cricket that’s why we won, we played bad cricket and that’s why we lost. That’s how simply we look at this defeat. We just want to take the learnings forward, improve and come back stronger in the next game. I can assure you that we are going to come back with more intent for sure and put Australia under pressure straight from ball one.
“It’s how you should stay calm and composed when you win, you shouldn’t get overexcited. The same way you react when you lose, something that you take on the chin. We take failures and losses as an opportunity to learn. And the last time we had a performance like this (in Galle), we had the most outstanding run after that. I would say that we needed something like this for us to get a reality check and understand what are the things we need to work on and not take anything for granted at any stage, especially at the Test match level in international cricket.”
Looking back the result of the Test, Virat was all praise for his bowlers who had bowled their heart out on a testing pitch. It was the batting that let them down according to Virat. “The batting let us down in the both the innings. It was sustained pressure from the Australians but that also depends upon how badly we batted in the first innings. That is the main reason why we couldn’t get back into the game.
“The second innings was a case of us showing some intent and trying to get some runs. The mindset changes drastically when you don’t have a good first-innings performance, especially in India and it was very difficult to come back from that. Conceding a 160-run lead (155-run lead) on that kind of wicket is criminal actually. Our batsmen put us in that position where it was very difficult for us to come back into the game. Our batting wasn’t up to the standard and that’s certainly how we shouldn’t bat from here onwards. I would say this was our worst batting performance and we need to accept that. The batsmen need to pull their socks up and come back stronger in Bangalore.”
Virat also emphasised that there were errors in judgements from four to five batsmen during the Indian innings. He said, it was difficult to gauge which ones would turn and the ones that would come straight on. Speaking about his own dismissal when he shouldered arms to an O’Keefe delivery, Virat said, “It was a judgement error from my side. I left the ball too early, I should have waited for the ball a little more. You can't say which ball is going to turn or which isn’t. You've got to play the line and I certainly didn't do that. It was my fault.”
Bowling was one positive that Virat wished to take into the second Test. For him, the Pune Test result was already passé. “If after 18 or 19 Tests, we play one bad game, you have to accept that it's a part of international cricket. I don't know if people were thinking that we couldn't lose at all, but in our mind, there was no such thing. If we don't play good cricket, then any team can beat us. I wouldn't think too much about this Test.”
