Kohli on India playing outside India: The Indian captain has called for more responsibility from his batsmen.
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With the Indian team boarding the plane for Australia, all eyeballs in world cricket have shifted to one of the most-awaited tour of the year in India’s tour of Australia. Ahead of the flight, captain Virat Kohli and coach Ravi Shastri appeared before the press, gicing insights about India’s preparation for the tour.
In the recent overseas tours (South Africa and England), Indian bowlers possessed the ability to take 20 wickets across five days, but it was their batsmen who let down the team in vital situations.
Albeit Kohli’s personal inhuman form, he called for the batsmen taking more responsibility outside of India. Speaking during the press conference regarding the same, he was quoted, “Our focus will be more on how batsmen will bat together on this tour. The bowlers are in a great space. After a long time, we have a bowling attack where we feel that we can pick up twenty wickets every time.”
Kohli acknowledged the fact that the Indian team hasn’t performed to their potential in overseas Tests but didn’t shy away from saying that the team has made ‘decent’ progress. “We definitely have made decent progress but there is still a lot of room for improvement. The thing is we understand within the group what we need to work on, Kohli said about the learning of the previous tours. “So It’s up to the individuals to take ownership of that, take responsibility and things that are explained, things that are laid out as a team culture point of view and team goal point of view.
“That can only be achieved if individuals go and work on those things. There were a lot of things that we sat down and figured out after England as to what went wrong. To be honest, we all felt that there was not much that went wrong, but whatever was not right was very extreme also. We played good cricket but the mistakes were also extreme,” he further said.
Kohli reiterated on the fact that contribution form India’s lower-order batsmen will be crucial in the upcoming four-match Test series. The 30-year old Indian captain felt that it is an area where the team can improve immensely. “Definitely the lower order I would say. Because we understand that for the top order, it can get difficult when guys are bowling a good spell and it’s really tough. Relatively easy for middle order, but again the lower order contributions are crucial.
As we saw in England, their lower order contributions were much bigger than ours. That was the difference in the series. That’s where we want guys to be fearless. Actually, that’s the best place to bat. If you’re an all-rounder who can bowl as well then there is literally no pressure. If they can get going they can change the course of the whole game or a whole series,” Kohli added.
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