India skipper Virat Kohli on Wednesday said that he would not be giving any explanations on all the outside noise regarding the conditions on offer as he and his team play to win. He went on to add that for him, it was about the batsmen failing to put on a good show in the third Test at the Narendra Modi Stadium.
“I do not understand why the cricket ball and pitch are brought into focus this often, it was about the batsmen not being skilled enough on that pitch to play properly. It was a bizarre display of batting from both teams. I have played this game long enough to understand what happens on the field. I would love if people ask me the question about home advantage when we are on a tour of Australia and England, not when you have seen two turning tracks,” said Kohli during a virtual press conference on Thursday. “I would like to ask a question? You play to win or you play to take the game five days and have some entertainment? We play to win, we don’t play that everyone scores runs. We play to win, people should enjoy when India wins, it should not matter in how many days the match is finishing. In the previous games, runs have been scored, you cannot criticise based on one game. Unfortunately, we do not want to give any explanation, so this question is not relevant to me, our focus is to win.”
When asked whether he supports rotation policy in the longest format of the game, Kohli said: “I think any format can be right for rotation, no human being can go through these many games, everyone needs to have a window to have a break, especially with the bubble format and the systems you have to follow in the bubble, it is pretty hard to stay excited about small things. Outside of that, it depends on how you stand mentally and physically, mental fatigue can be a big factor, these things are important and this is where our bench strength becomes important.
Kohli agreed that spinning tracks do become a talking point quite often and he added that there is not much noise when a match finishes inside three days on a seaming track.
India had managed to defeat England by ten wickets within two days in the third Test at the Narendra Modi Stadium. The match saw both India and England batsmen failing to shine and getting out to balls that did not turn and skidded through from the spinners. But critics have looked to blame the pitch for the failure of the batsmen. “I totally believe that. There is always too much noise and conversation about spinning tracks. I am sure if our media is in a space to contradict those views or present those views which say it is unfair to criticise just spinning tracks then I think it will be a balanced conversation. The unfortunate part is that everyone plays along with that narrative and they keeping making it news till the time it is relevant,” said Kohli while replying to a query during a virtual press conference.
