Hyderabad: India may have been blanked in the Twenty20 series by Australia but captain Virat Kohli feels all was not lost and there was still time to make up.
“We could not win the T20 series because in the first match, we didn’t play good cricket and in the second, Australia played better than us,” he told reporters on Friday.
“I think it’s important to understand why we lost. From outside, it’s easy to say, they don’t have the heart to play... we always want to win games for India,” Kohli said.
Dismissing talk of experimentation, the captain said: “If we only had to experiment, we would have got out for 50 as everybody would have got out trying to hit sixes. If you see it negatively, you’ll only be able to extract negative things but if you look at it positively, you’ll be able to take positive things.”
He backed his players though. “If we want to see how a few guys play in a certain situation, we’ll play them again in that situation. It’s not like if a guy is not playing in a certain situation, he doesn’t have the ability,” he said.
Kohli then moved on to the World Cup and said the upcoming IPL will not affect the composition of the squad for the quadrennial tournament. “No, I don’t see the IPL having any influence on World Cup selection. I think that will be very, very radical sort of analysis,” he said.
“We need to have a solid team. Before we head into the IPL, we need to be absolutely clear of what team we want for the World Cup. I don’t see anything changing on how the IPL goes for any of the players. If one or two players do not have a good IPL season, it doesn’t mean that they are out of the picture for the World Cup. Those things are not going to matter,” Kohli explained.
Kohli is keen on trying out Rishabh Pant but would not want to disturb bowling combinations. “We will have to think about the combinations. I don’t think playing a bowler less is a good idea because with the extra fielder in till the 40th over, it becomes very difficult to sort of get a few guys to chip in with a few overs here and there. We will have to work out the batting combination to try and give game-time to the guys we want to. But, I don’t see the bowling combination changing,” he said.
