JOIN USWhile there has been no question over Virat Kohli’s talent, the one complaint against has been that he doesn’t convert his hundreds into big ones.
“I was criticised for not getting big hundreds,” Kohli said. “You guys might think that I don’t know that but I know that. It is disappointing to get out on 115 or 120 after having done all the hard work so those are the times when I told myself to take more time, just see it through with singles and take the odd boundary in between and today I got a good feel of building a big hundred. So did Jinx (Ajinkya Rahane) which is good for the team.
“If we get big partnerships we give ourselves more chances of being in the game wherever we play. So, it’s all about correcting your mistakes and learning from your innings be it a hundred as well. Next time if I am in a situation like this again, I will want to convert it into a double hundred. You have to keep improving your game and today it was a learning curve for me on how to build a big innings. I will try to store it in my head and try to repeat that again when I go out to play,” he explained.
Kohli didn’t regret getting out in the last over of the day. “Not at all,” he said. “Very proud of the way we played and we backed ourselves throughout. Not disappointed at all. It would have been nice had I not got out. But still we have (Mohammad) Shami who is playing well and Umesh (Yadav) can play the big shots too. We will try to get close to 500, and then if we can get two or three quick wickets it will be an enjoyable game,” he offered.
Kohli was also surprised with Australians dropping a fair few catches, some of which were sitters. “They have set very high standards for themselves in the field,” Kohli noted. “Today was actually surprising… Dropping three catches, so many misfields and giving easy singles for us... I don’t remember the last time I have seen them being so inconsistent on the field.”
Meanwhile, pacer Ryan Harris admitted that Australian fielding was below par on the day.
“It could have been a totally different day but at the end of the day it's not,” he said. “That is the disappointing thing, if we had taken our chances it could have been totally different,” he said.