We believe a lot in ourselves as a team: Virat Kohli

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Ahead of the Sri Lanka Test series, Team India captain spoke the importance of dealing with each opposition equally

With India set to play their first Test of the home season (2017-18) against the islanders, the Indian captain felt it was nice to comeback to Test cricket which comes with its set of challenges.

While the Indian team played a series of ODIs and T20Is against Australia and New Zealand this home season, the Men in Blue will don the whites once again against Sri Lanka this year. When asked how hard does Virat and his company find to strike a balance between these series, he rightly pointed out that a good team needs to win everywhere in order to be considered as the best. 

“We want to rather develop our games for difficult conditions. If you want to be the top side in the world for a longer period of time you have to win everywhere. If we had played away as well, we would have maintained the same intensity and have the same mindset.

“We certainly believe a lot in ourselves as a team. You have to work hard if you're to win the game. The mindset of winning is very important and if you can embrace playing in difficult conditions that will be the difference. We want to be uncomfortable. We want to embrace being uncomfortable and that's the most important thing,” he added. 

The Indian skipper also laid emphasis on the importance of dealing with each opponent with the same amount of seriousness and skill.

“We feel every match we play is important. Every series is huge. It is not like if we lose the series and you guys are going to say nothing to us. Winning is the most important thing. For that everyone is on the same page whether we play in India or abroad, regardless of the opposition. We want to maintain our consistency as a team and that has worked for us,” he said.

Asked about managing the workload with all-rounder Hardik Pandya being rested for the first two Tests, Virat said players who give that much extra on the field need rest and the situation is sometimes not understood by all.

“This is one thing which I don't think people explain properly. There is a lot of talk from the outside in terms of workload - whether a player should be rested or should not be rested. All cricketers play 40 games in a year. Three guys who should get rest, their workloads are to be managed. Eleven players play the game but not everyone would have batted 45 overs in an ODI game or not everyone would have bowled 30 overs in a Test match," he assessed.

“But the ones who are doing it regularly need to be assessed because the body takes that much time to recover. People only look at 'oh everyone has played 40 games'. They don't look at time spent on the crease.

“The number of runs that have been run between the wicket, the number of overs bowled in difficult conditions, what were the conditions, what were the temperatures like, have the bodies recovered or not - I don't think people go into that analysis. So, from the outside it looks like why are people asking for rest, everyone has played same number of games,” he further added.

While the national selectors along with the team management are working on providing the required time-off from the game ahead of a big series against South Africa, the Indian skipper too believed in taking a few weeks off from the game if need be.

“Definitely I do need a rest, why don't I. When I think of the time my body should be rested I will ask for it, why not. I'm not a robot, you can slice my skin and check if I still bleed,” he iterated.

With the first Test match set to take place on November 16 at the Eden Gardens, Virat hinted on the prospect of having KL Rahul and Shikhar Dhawan as the two openers in the squad.

“Three openers is a situation that has always been a thing. The balance has swung every now and then with one of them missing out. Now that Shikhar and KL are playing well it’s very difficult to pick two out of three when all of them are so good, and they have done so well,” he added.

 

 

http://www.bcci.tv/news/2017/news/16795/we-believe-a-lot-in-ourselves-as-a-team-virat-kohli

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Virat and his team have done really well since he took over as test skipper. All the test series have been won.

We have only lost 2 matches since then, one against SL and against Aus.

Tougher tests are ahead, hope Virat, Vijay, Rahul, Rahane, Pujara, Bhuvi, Umesh, Shami,Ashwin would have learned some valuable lessons from their previous tours of Eng, Aus, SA and perform well as a unit in the upcoming tours.

I honestly don't see SL winning a test against India in this series, unless our team takes the Lankans lightly and drop their guard.