Feels good to win from difficult situation: Kohli

“We were actually watching in awe yesterday, the sweeping was outstanding and we congratulated both the batters because it was proper Test cricket batting and high-quality temperament from both as well,” Virat Kohli said on Sunday afternoon, not long after sewing up his eighth successive Test series win as captain, courtesy the innings-and-53-run victory over Sri Lanka in the second Test.

‘Both the batters’ were Dimuth Karunaratne and Kusal Mendis, who made second-innings centuries at the SSC ground to narrow the margin and offer respectability to the host following the first-innings capitulation for 183. The sweep was Sri Lanka’s preferred scoring option, and Kohli spoke at length on that issue.

“When you are chasing a target, then your mindset is very different,” the Indian captain said. “But when you have a deficit of 440 on you still and then you lose a couple of wickets and then you are playing one way and it’s coming off, I would say, as a batsman, it’s very difficult to keep carrying on (sweeping) for four sessions and that’s exactly what we spoke as a team. This can happen for two sessions because of momentum but when the day ended yesterday, we spoke about coming out fresh, they have to do this again for two sessions.

“High-risk cricket can be played on one particular day, I would say. And that’s a brilliant day for any team. But to do that again and again is a difficult thing. We knew that we can get in as a team whenever we get a mistake or two, and that’s exactly what happened. And also the pitch was such that those chances had to come at some stage. But credit to them to have done that, it requires a lot of ability and mental strength.”

As captain, Kohli pointed out, there was only so much he could do when the batsmen are intent on sweeping. “The field was spread as well and still they were finding gaps and that’s what momentum can do,” he observed. “You have to keep things realistic and accept that these situations will also come again and again, and it’s how we react as a team. It’s all about improving ourselves as players in those situations and not getting too frustrated. We tried our best whatever we could but they were just too good yesterday, for sure.”

Kohli said India was prepared for Sri Lanka to make a fist of it in the second innings. “You expect teams playing Test cricket to come out and play like that. Because of the way we got wickets in the first innings, sometimes frustration can creep in when we don’t get wickets in a session. But you have to realise that those eight wickets (on the third morning), we would have probably liked to get them throughout the day. If you spread it into three sessions, so it was all about keeping things realistic. Saying that we only wanted to keep things tight in the first session and see where the game goes, we ended up getting eight. So, no point having expectations on those same lines and getting frustrated if you don’t get wickets.

“Then, you have to give credit to the batsmen as well. To play like that on a pitch like that, it was high-quality batting and you expect that to happen at the Test level. We spoke as a team that we have to embrace this because all sessions that we play are not going to go our way. If we make our expectations on those lines, then we will get frustrated and we will be disappointed, so just be realistic and keep working hard, keep hitting the areas, keep doing the skills you know best and just wait for something to happen with our discipline and then we can put some more pressure again. It was just about not going too far ahead of ourselves.”

On Saturday evening, after picking up his 26th five-for in Tests, R Ashwin had spoken about how the pitch had got progressively slower, making wicket-taking a difficult proposition. Kohli totally endorsed his lead bowler’s assessment. “Yes, it was getting slower and that’s why we took the new ball straightaway,” he noted. “We thought with the harder new ball, one might keep straight as well because the older ball was soft and all balls were turning, so it was very difficult to get edges and create chances. As soon as the new ball was taken, we thought the batsmen were going to look to score now. The ball might come better on to the bat and then they might play more shots. The bowlers are in the game when there is more pace because of the harder ball.

“Ashwin was spot-on yesterday, it was getting difficult at the later stages of the day. Today again, we spoke about getting those couple of chances and then we can get 4-5 in a session which ended up happening in the second session. The first session was hard work but we spoke of a little bit of discipline, knowing that they will come out and play only one way because it was very difficult to defend on this pitch. The bowlers did an outstanding job today of pulling things back and keeping it simple. And that’s what happens in Test cricket. Sessions go away from you and you have to pull it back to win a Test match. It was very good for us from a team’s point of view. We were up against a challenge in the last four sessions that we played yesterday and today. We managed to turn things around and you always feel good as a team when you come back from a difficult situation and win the Test match.”