We should have won by a bigger margin, says Kohli

While dismissing that there were any fears of losing the match during Afghanistan’s chase, Virat Kohli admitted on Wednesday that India could have done better and won by a bigger margin their opening World T20 game.

Having helped India post a challenging total with his even half-century, that fetched him the man of the match award, the right hander paid a back-handed complement to Afghanistan saying that their good showing was because the minnows had nothing to lose. “I feel we could have bowled in better areas and won with a bigger margin,” he said when asked if bowling continues to be a worry.

“(But) it was a good wicket and they had nothing to lose. That is also a big factor which isn’t discussed much. A team ranked lower has nothing to lose. They will bowl their hearts out; they have no double thoughts, no problems with the situation. In batting too, they come out and play their shots. If they come off, then it becomes a problem for the bowling side. But overall I feel we could have done better as far as the bowling unit is concerned and could have won by a bigger margin,” he offered.

Kohli was not in favour tinkering with the struggling opening combination of Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag. “In T20, I believe if you play with one combination, then it will be good for the team,” he noted. “If you keep changing the combination because you think it is not working for you, then according to me it has a negative impact.

You can experiment with the bowling in T20 but in batting, you have a set batting order. The first three play as many as possible and then you can change the middle order around but I don’t like the thought of changing the combination. In T20, you don’t need a start of 80-90.

A 40-50 (start) is good. We have had only one match. The kind of openers we have, when they get going, they will give us a very good start,” the youngster explained.
About his own batting, which is in the best of shapes, the 23-year-old said he wasn’t thinking too much about it. “I don’t think too much about it. There was a patch like this earlier also and everyone called it a purple patch.

But I take each match as a new match and try to score as many as possible for the team. It’s important that the team wins because of my contribution. That is the thinking. I don’t think about my personal goals -- how many consecutive innings I have made runs or how many runs I have made.”

At no point of time, Kohli maintained, he was worried about losing the match. “It was all about staying calm in tricky situations and making sure you get back into better situations. We have to be more careful and see to it that you make sure the team wins rather than going out there and being over confident and take them lightly. There were a few tense moments out there and a few situations didn’t go according to plan. That was sort of disturbing but I didn’t think at any point that we would lose the game.”