Kohli: T20 defeat a ‘blessing in disguise’

Cricket365
October 11, 2015

India batsman Virat Kohli isn't overly upset about his side's T20 series defeat to South Africa, saying they now have plenty of time to tinker with their line-up ahead of the World Twenty20 in India next year.

Kohli feels that India did just fine considering their lack of recent T20 exposure, and the two-nil series defeat showed them what worked and what didn't, and allowed them a chance to think about changes.

Kohli said: "As a team, it hurts because we are playing at home. We are more used to the conditions than South Africa are. But we have not played too many T20 games since last year's World T20.

"We have a lot of T20 games now going forward to the World T20. We shouldn't be too hard on ourselves and we just need to learn from these games.

"It is actually a blessing in disguise to work out our combination before the big event."

As for his own situation, Kohli went from captaining the Test side against Sri Lanka, and scoring a ton and a fifty, to handing the armband back to MS Dhoni here.

Kohli said he didn't mind the captaincy switch, and that he was happy with his batting, despite scoring 43 and one in the two lost matches played.

He added: "My mental set-up does not really change whether I am captain or not. I am feeling pretty good. I am batting quite well since the Sri Lanka series and have been talking a lot with (batting coach) Sanjay Bangar.

"Both of us felt that I am hitting the ball a lot better than I ever have. I just have to work on my balance at the crease and my contact points.

"Dharamsala was a first experience of playing a different sort of role, just taking singles and giving Rohit (Sharma) the strike. In the second game, unfortunately, I got run out.

"It happens in international cricket. But personally, I'm pretty happy with the way I am hitting the ball."