I’m not at all competing with anyone, says Kohli
CENTURION: Virat Kohli is on top of the world after aggregating a record 558 runs, and signing off with a third match-winning century in the ODI series against South Africa.
After the staggering 5-1 series win on Friday, Kohli, who was upset with media criticism of team selection in the Test series, was asked if he felt he was the best batsman in the world.
The skipper, the only Indian batsman to score a century in the Test series which the hosts won 2-1, said he wasn’t worried about the rankings game, and what mattered was delivering the goods for the team.
“Look, I will be very honest with you, at this stage I don’t feel like competing with anyone. My only motivation is to get into that frame of mind. If anything, I only look to help my team in any way I can. And during the course of that, if you are thinking about the team, special things happen. But if you are thinking about being ahead of someone else, then you will be found out very soon by this game and you are compromising on what the team needs,” he said in the media interaction after the ODIs.
“As I said I don’t want any tags, I don’t want any headlines. I just go out there and do my job. It is up to people to write what they write, I don’t want to be called anything. It’s my job, I am supposed to do what I am doing. Everyone is doing a job, they have the freedom to write and say what they want, but it is very important that I don’t change with that because my zone is very simple – it is simply doing hard work and performing for the team.”
Asked if the ODI series win was his biggest on foreign soil, Kohli snapped: “It is something you people can tell because till a month back, we were a very bad team. Now such questions are being asked. We have not changed our mindset, we were focusing only on our cricket and I don’t want to flow with this – whether this is the biggest win or not. Our job is to play, work hard and perform, try to win every match.”
Despite having won the series, India only left out Bhuvneshwar Kumar and included Shardul Thakur, who took four wickets.
Kohli said: “There is only one guy whose place we wanted to experiment with, Bhuvneshwar, because his workload was immense… Bhuvi was feeling up in his body and hence the change. We didn’t feel like we wanted to change something else.”
“The two wrist-spinners deserved to play all the games because of the way they’ve bowled. They’ve been one factor that has been in the mind of the opposition throughout.”
South Africa were without injured skipper Faf du Plessis in the second half of the series, after AB de Villiers sat out the first three games. Kohli denied it diluted India’s victory.