Kolkata: Former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly’s iconic shirt- waving at lord’s after winning the final of the Natwest Trophy is still a talking point of Indian cricket fans.
Ganguly is often asked about the incident and the former captain believes that the question had a shelf life. In an interview he said, “Virat Kohli would run down Oxford Street if India won the World Cup in England in 2019.” Sourav repeated it again during the book launch, “Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians” written by Boria Majumdar . “He will take his shirt off in Oxford Street… We better get our cameras ready. Kohli has his six packs. I won’t be surprised if he takes his shirt off.”
With laugh, Kohli replied that not only him, but Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah will do the same as well.
“I don’t think it will only be me. For sure, Hardik will be following me. 120 per cent. Bumrah is there as well because he has six packs too. He is there in the game. There will be a few candidates,” Kohli said.
Indian skipper said about the positive mindset of the players and the belief they had before the third test against the Proteas in Johannesburg.
“It was hard after the first two test matches but the mindset was that we need to win at any cost. So even after two tough test matches it is the belief that got us back when no one believed in us. The coach, the management… we believed in ourselves and we were able to turn the things around. We did not worry about anything. We focused on only one thing that we are good enough and we can win, and that’s all that was required,” said Kohli
Kohli opened up about his decision to bat first in the third test against the Proteas in Johannesburg that was critisised by the cricket experts. He said, “Obviously it was difficult because we thought the wicket is going to play very differently and it’s gonna be difficult from early on. But I felt played that test match doing all the right things and our intention was right throughout. We were not dishonest to the game, we were not scared any stage and played the right way and we knew that the game cannot do injustice to us,”
“As a team we kept looking at things from the other perspective. There were opposition from all over regarding our decision to bat first but the team believed that it was the right decision for us,” he noted.
This great right handed batsman said thinking out of the box is the key to get success under difficult conditions in the modern day cricket.
“The mindset matters when you are going to face something difficult. At that point the team was in transition and they ended up becoming a great team overseas as well, was purely because all the payers in the team wanted to achieve the the same goal…The most important thing is you when you g to conditions that are not your own, you need to have their ability to look at things in a very different way,” Kohli said.
“In cricket there is no one way of doing something. There is always your way and if you believe in your way then you can make things happen,” he added.
India won the third and the final test by 63 runs against the Proteas but won the ODI and T20 series there after.