India skipper Virat Kohli says he is not someone who hits in the air to entertain the crowd, after scoring career-best 94* in first T20I win v WI
Skipper Virat Kohli celebrates India's win over West Indies in Hyderabad on Friday. Pic/PTI
Hyderabad: Indian captain Virat Kohli on Friday said that he's not a player who hits the ball in the air to entertain the crowd but someone who wants to do his job and win matches for the country.
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Kohli, who played a sublime innings of career-best 94 not out off just 50 balls in India's six-wicket win over West Indies in the first T20I, said he does not want to play slam-bang cricket even in this shortest format. "I am not someone who comes to the ground to hit the ball in the air to entertain the crowd. I focus on doing the job. Our strength as a team is to strike in the latter half of the innings," Kohli said after the match.
"I don't want to change my game too much because I play all three formats. I just want to contribute in all three. I don't want to be a format specialist," he added. KL Rahul also struck an impressive 62 off just 40 balls to help India chase down the target of 208 with eight balls to spare.
The second T20I will be played at Thiruvananthapuram tonight. After hitting Kesrick Williams for a six in the 16th over, a fired up Indian captain also used his bat as an imaginary notebook to "tick" the bowler's name off. Kohli later said that he remembered Williams doing the same in Jamaica when the Indian team was there for a tour.
"It's not the CPL [about Williams's celebration], it happened to me in Jamaica when he got me out. So I thought I'll tick a few in the notebook as well, but all good. There were a few words, but smiles at the end," Kohli said.
"That's what you want to see. Good competitive cricket but in the end shake hands and give a hi-fi. That's what cricket is all about. Play it hard but have respect for opponents."
He said while chasing a big total, there were a lot of distractions with the scoreboard pressure, but after playing a few dots, he began to settle down and got himself into shape to play the shots.
West Indies captain Kieron Pollard said that his side did not execute the plans properly. "208 to defend, on any day, you'd take that 10 out of 10 times. Where we lost the game was the extras and our bowling. Our execution was poor. If we had executed the plans we had spoken about, despite the good batting wicket, it would have been a different scenario," he said.
"There are two areas in any game, and with the bat the guys were exceptional. There are a lot of positives to take from this game. Hetmyer and Lewis got back amongst the runs and that was quite satisfying, but we need to do the all-round basics right," he added.
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