Internet Desk: Pakistan became the champions of ICC Champions Trophy after inflicting a crushing defeat on their arch- rivals India at the Oval on Sunday. Put to bat first after India won the toss, the mighty Pak amassed a huge score of 338-4 after the end of 50 overs. Opener Fakhar Azham scored his maiden ton and helped his team reach a huge total on the board.
Indian skipper Virat Kohli said that not only he but also the other players try to go out and perform to their fullest. “No one goes out there to throw their wicket away or get out. We give our best every time we go out on the field, and I’m really proud of the way the team has played in this tournament. The cricket is played between two teams. There’s no one team on the box, so you have to accept losses, you have to accept that the other team has outplayed you and they’ve shown better skill than you, they’ve shown better composure in pressure situations than you. Yes, we have shown the composure in pressure situations most often in this tournament, but that is no guarantee that you’re going to do it every time. Obviously your best effort is to try and do it every time, but cricket is not about doing well in every game that you play. You will have failures, and one team has to lose on the day, and today was our day to lose because the opposition played much better than us.”
Kohli is of the opinion that his team could have chased the huge target of 339 runs if they had one or two big partnerships but the fall of important wickets at regular intervals costed them the game.
“See, you can never tell in a short format game in a chase because when Hardik started hitting, everyone started getting the feeling that if we could take the game deep — there was a pleasant moment, sir, for you. (Laughter.) If we can take the game deep, then we can probably get closer to the total, and that’s the kind of ability players have these days. But again, a mix-up or an error at that stage, so these things happen on the field, you understand that as cricketers, but yeah, early wickets are never good, especially in a chase. Then we kept losing wickets. One big partnership would have been the key to set it up nicely, but as I said, credit to the opposition.”
“Yeah, it’s always a bad feeling when you get out or the batting doesn’t work collectively, and everyone feels bad about not having contributed to the team in any way. So yeah, I also felt the same kind of emotions, but you know, you’ve played enough to understand that your job is done, you tried your best, and then you can’t control anything afterwards. In the end, you know, you have to accept and admire sometimes the skill of the opposition, as well, and see that, you know, they also have come to win a game of cricket,” said Virat when he was asked to describe his own emotions during the match when he was dismissed by Md. Aamir.
India displayed a poor display in bowling when the bowlers conceded 25 runs as extras and that certainly made the skipper angry.
“The extras are something that’re – never a good feeling to concede so many. That is something that we need to keep a check on. You know, those things are something that are controllable. A guy hitting a good shot is something that after a stage it’s not in your control, you’ve already bowled the ball, but conceding extras is something that we can control as a team, and yeah, I mean, 25 extras is a bit too much in a game like that, and that’s something that we certainly need to take care of in the future. ” said a dejected Kohli.
Analyzing this defeat will not be a tough job for the Indian captain as he thinks that they get to learn from the game of cricket in every match.
“Not at all. I mean, we analyse our victories, also. We analyse defeats, as well. As I said, you learn with every cricket game that you play. It’s up to you whether you are open to learning things or you’re not. I mean, if you’re happy with success and then you’re completely ignoring it, and you want to ignore failures or dwell too much in it, it’s not a good balance at all. There’s nothing — there’s no game that we play that we feel like, oh, we don’t even need to look back and see what we can improve on, and definitely when you haven’t done things right, more things have gone wrong in a game, you obviously sit down and analyse and learn from it.”
A poor performance from Kohli before this tournament in England had rising certain question about his capability to which the Kohli calmly replied “I said it when I came here, it doesn’t matter if it is happening in England or Australia or South Africa. This is cricket, and we’re here to play good games and win games of cricket. It wasn’t about me coming to England and doing well. It was about the team doing well, and we have done well to be in the finals. We can be very proud of that as a unit, and we leave here with our heads held high because we understand the kind of expectations and pressures we face as a team, but credit to everyone for standing up and showing that resilience and reaching the finals, and today we were outplayed in all departments.”