On Sunday, One of the greatest knocks was played by Virat Kohli in T20I cricket against Pakistan in the Super 12 encounter of the T20 World Cup. He was unbeaten on 82 runs off 53 balls and assured Team India chased down the 160-run target and won the match by four wickets.
However, it became more special as Kohli dragged the side to victory, who at one stage were reeling at 31-4. India lost KL Rahul early and was reduced to 7/1 when Kohli walked out to bat. Things got worse as Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, and Axar Patel also were packed early, putting enormous pressure on Kohli and Hardik Pandya to complete the chase, which appeared an uphill task.
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Meanwhile, Kohli started slow and at one stage could only manage 12 runs off the first 21 balls he faced. He finally turned out to be the match-winner for India, shared his thought process during the epic run chase, and also spoke about the slow start.
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“When I was 12 of 21, I was like ‘I am messing this game up. I am not putting the ball in the gaps. But when you have experience and understand the value of batting deep, that’s always been my role-playing for India. I know that I can do a lot of the power-hitting towards the end of the innings,” said Kohli on Star Sports, the official broadcaster of the T20 World Cup.
Further, he was also praised for his teammate Hardik Pandya with whom he stitched a 100-plus stand and salvaged India from a tough situation. “Honestly, I was feeling a lot of pressure at that stage. But then when he came in and hit a few boundaries, I kind of opened up. That partnership, we didn’t even realize when we got to our 100. We kept talking, we kept running hard, and kept watching their body language. We knew it would turn at some stage, it turned quite late to be honest. We would have liked to do it earlier,” the former India captain stated.
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