Capt Kohli pleased with professional effort

It wasn’t one of the most convincing wins for India despite the margin (6 wickets). There were phases when they looked vulnerable chasing a small but tricky target in testing conditions against South Africa. Rohit Sharma’s calculated assault and game sense by K L Rahul and M S Dhoni saw them home in their opener on Wednesday.

Skipper Virat Kohli termed India’s performance as “professional effort” and agreed they probably ticked all the boxes though it’s just the first game in the tournament.

"It was a low-scoring game, not the highest of totals you will see in one-day cricket nowadays,” he noted. “That was because of the way the pitch was throughout the course of the game and I think, from that point of view, we were very professional with the new ball in the middle overs, the spinners picking up five wickets between them, was outstanding who finished well. I think, overall, we are pretty happy with how we played.

“Starting off well is always an important thing and we got together nicely as a team in the first half on the field. It is very important to create that energy and we were able to do that in the first ten and from there, we really built the game nicely and finished it off in a professional manner,” he elaborated.

It must have been difficult for Kohli to leave out Ravindra Jadeja who had done everything you could ask of him in the two warm-up matches but the skipper reasoned that Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav were picked ahead as they had done well against South Africa in the ODI series last year.

“A massive factor,” said Kohli when asked if that show influenced his decision to go with two wrist spinners. “We spoke about the fact the last time we played them, they were not that confident against our spinners. What we experienced was they were not able to rotate strike so well. They were trying to hit their way out of a situation which, for a captain, any day I would love batsmen trying to hit boundaries to get out of trouble rather than rotating strike because the risk factor is high. The spinners together also understood and realised that that is the scenario and they bowled accordingly.”