Credit to Sri Lanka, we are not invincible: Kohli

Virat Kohli tried everything he could on the field. He was as animated as ever, ran around from one end of the field to another, gave the batsmen his usual stares to try and unsettle them, and even unleashed his part-time medium pace.

None of those helped, though, as Sri Lanka kept its calm throughout a stiff chase even while managing to attack, and ended with a seven-wicket win at The Oval on Thursday in the ICC Champions Trophy.

In the end, Kohli put the loss down to the nature of the tournament. “I think Sri Lanka played well. That fact is also present,” he said. “We're playing against a team. We're not playing amongst ourselves. You've got the top eight teams in the world and there's no guarantee that someone can't beat the other.”

Kohli said he felt India’s 321 for 6 was ‘enough’ but doffed his hat to the Sri Lankan batsmen, who kept attacking throughout the chase, even after losing a couple of wickets with victory on the horizon.

“I personally thought that we had enough on the board halfway. And I think our bowlers also bowled decently well,” he said. “If batsmen come out and play like that and everyone plays well, you have to give credit to the opposition as well. We're not invincible. We're playing against other sides who are also champion sides.

“If a side comes out and plays cricket with that kind of mindset and executes their shots so well, then you have to take your hat off sometimes and say very well played. They did not lose wickets, and they kept rotating strike, which we as a team have done so many times.

“Me and Kedar (Jadhav) chipped in with our overs, and the game pulled back at that stage. But then, again everyone came out and played positive cricket from their team. When we got those two run-outs, we thought we can get a couple of wickets now. But again, those guys came in and played their shots, and it came off well.”

While Sri Lanka’s batsmen took the attack to India throughout, Kohli’s men paced their innings in typical fashion – start slow, set a platform and then hit out. Kohli said he found no need to change that but hinted that India could seek 20 runs more in its next game against South Africa.

“We obviously have to consolidate and then explode in the end, and that's the way we always play,” he explained. “We're not a side that always plays explosive cricket throughout the 50 overs.

“I thought we paced it well. In hindsight, when you look back, maybe you think of phases that we could have accelerated, but I don't see that as a major issue. Maybe we will have to push harder now in the next few games to give us a 20-run cushion. Maybe after seeing a result like this, because we're playing on the same ground as well.”

India’s bowling combination also came under the scanner, especially after Ravindra Jadeja’s expensive returns. With Sri Lanka taking the attack to the lone spinner, India struggled to keep the run-rate down in the middle overs, but Kohli said he was happy with his bowling options.

“Sometimes teams are going to come up and do that against you, and sometimes you literally can't do anything,” he said. “You try to find ways to get people out, but it doesn't happen. If you have a couple of guys with off days in between, you can't go in with eight bowling options. You literally have five or six with a part-timer. In any case, you play two spinners, or you play four seamers.

“You always see the hindsight when you lose games of cricket. You trust your bowlers to control runs, and, you know, have good lengths and have your covers when they get out. Sometimes it comes off. Sometimes it doesn't. That doesn't mean you don't think ‘what if we had done something different?’ You back a side, and you go with it. When things don't go well, obviously, you address those things.

“As I said, in one-day cricket, no one is guaranteed a win, and you can play with five spinners, or you can play with five fast bowlers. You have to bowl well in any case.”

Kohli said he wouldn’t read too much into the bowlers’ show, likening it to the equivalent of a batting collapse.

“It's like a batting collapse. When you collapse as a batting unit, you don't sit down and think your life's over,” he said. “You just move on and say it's a bad day and forget about it.

“In a Test match, you have a lot to think about because the game goes on for five days. But I think in shorter-format cricket, you have to forget it and move on because you're playing in three days’ time again, and we have to be fresh as a team. We have to get back into that same mindset and come out and try to do the same things again.”

Sticking to being practical and yet positive, Kohli said the team would approach the next match – a must-win – as a quarter-final, and said the recent results had made the group very ‘exciting’.

“It's like a quarter-final. It's against a very high-quality side, and we have to go out there and play good cricket,” he said. “Even if we had four points on the board right now, we still would have gone out there to try to beat South Africa, and that's exactly the mindset we are going to take into the next game.

“It's become very exciting. Virtually every game is a quarter-final now. In our group especially, all teams are on two points, and you have to win your next game to go through, which is, I think, an exciting position to be in for all teams.”