Seemingly unhappy with India’s performance at the WTC Final on Wednesday, Indian cricket team captain, Virat Kohli, hinted at his plans of bringing in the “right people with right mindset to perform” for Test matches. The plan matches the list of players available in white-ball matches to help share the responsibility when needed.
Though the Captain refrained from naming any team members specifically, he did share his dejection about certain players not playing with the intention of scoring runs that cost the team the match. Their lack of performance at the ground put an increased amount of pressure on the batting side. With merely 8 runs off 54 balls in the first innings, Cheteshwar Pujara bowled 35 dot balls before scoring his first run. He made a similar show in the second innings with only 15 runs in 80 balls.
In the virtual press conference conducted after the match, Virat said, “We will continue to reassess and continue to have conversations around what are the things required to strengthen our side and not follow or fall prey to certain patterns.”
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Sharing his plans of strategizing for the future without waiting for a year and his displeasure over some players’ performance, the captain said, “You have to reassess and replan and understand what dynamics work for the team and how we can be fearless. Bring in right people who have right mindset to perform.”
He also put light on the ways to score more runs as India struggled to make even 217 in the first essay. The second innings casted a bigger shadow over their scorecard with the team getting all out for a mere 170.
“We definitely need to work out better plans on understanding how to score runs. We have to stay in sync with the momentum of the game and not let the game drift away too much. I don’t think there is any technical difficulties as such,” Kohli said while adding that they need to put bowlers under pressure and disallow them from playing the same area for a long time “unless it is absolutely overcast and ball swinging all over the place like it happened on day 1.”
Speaking about the strategies to put a strong bowling opposition like New Zealand under pressure, he said, “The endeavour would be to try and score runs and not worry about getting out in testing conditions. That’s the way you can put the opposition under pressure otherwise you are standing there hoping that you don’t get out and you are not being optimistic enough. You have to take calculated risks.”
