Skipper Kohli gets edgy on team selection

Ajay Naidu

Centurion, January 17

It is always tough for a captain to address a press conference after his team has suffered a miserable defeat. And when the captain happens to be as sharp with his verbal volleys as he is with his bat, the media interaction can become an edgy affair.

Thus Virat Kohli too got engaged in a tense one-two with an Indian reporter when he slipped in a query about India’s team selections. “You tell me what should be the playing eleven. Next time you give me the eleven and I’ll play them,” shot back the Indian captain.

Kohli continued: “We don’t take too much notice of opinions going around about us. We have a core group in the side, including the captain, that makes certain decisions. Now nobody will say a word about Mohammed Shami because he has bowled well and taken wickets.”

“I’m saying the loss obviously hurts. But you make one decision and you back it,” Kohli said. “We certainly don’t sit here and say, ‘Oh if you fail in one game you are not good enough to be at this level or...’ Didn’t we lose in India? We had the best XI there. Whoever plays should be good enough to go out there and do the job for the team.”

Changes in team

Later, Kohli took on a South African journalist who quizzed him about the “inconsistencies” in his selections. The journalist even reminded the captain that he has made team changes for each of his 34 Test matches as captain.

As expected, there was a quick, sharp, riposte from Kohli. “How many Tests have I been in charge, 30? And how many have we won? 20. How many have we lost? Two.” (Note: Kohli has won 20 and lost five Tests out of the 34 he had captained India.)

The reporter retorted by asking how many of these wins were in India, in home conditions. “Does it matter? Wherever we play we try to do our best. I’m here to answer your questions, not to fight with you,” Kohli responded.

Later, he said: “And answering your question, sir, how many times did South Africa come into the game in India? Coming close to winning games in India? Can you count?”

The reporter replied: “That’s because of the pitches.”

“But we are not complaining about Cape Town either,” Kohli said. “The game was finished in three days, one (day) was a washout. So look, we are not complaining about pitches, we are not complaining about conditions. We have come here to play. As I said, we have had equal opportunities to win in both games, and that’s the positive we can take out of it, but I’m not sitting here comforting my guys. So I don’t know what you are listening to, but I’m asking everyone to be hard on themselves.”

Numbers Game

• 2 Cheteshwar Pujara has become the first Indian to be run-out twice in a Test. He has been involved in 6 of India’s last 8 run-outs in Tests!
• 9 India’s streak of 9 series wins in a row has ended. Starting with the tour of Sri Lanka in 2015, India had won 9 consecutive series. However, since the start of 2010, India have played 8 series outside Asia excluding West Indies, without none
• 1 In four innings, India’s specialist batsmen have scored only one 50-plus score — Virat Kohli’s 153 in the first innings at Centurion
• 7 21-year old Lungi Ngidi is the 7th SA player to be named the Man of the Match on Test debut
• 2 Is the number of 100 partnerships in the series — both by South Africa, and both involving AB de Villiers