No ODIs before Champions Trophy not a bad thing, remarks Virat Kohli

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Indian skipper Virat Kohli was dismissed by Chris Woakes
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Indian skipper Virat Kohli. (Photo Source: Twitter)

Team India has been on a roll in the recent past. Under the leadership of Virat Kohli, they managed to outplay the English team in the 3 match ODI series recently. Albeit they lost the final match at Kolkata, they had the series in their cabinet with scoreline of 2-1. Earlier on the tour, the English team was badly bruised in the Tests with a serious 0-4 drubbing.

The dominion of the Indian players is clearly reflected by the handsome scorelines. One man who has been instrumental amidst all this has been skipper Virat Kohli. Speaking at a press conference after the match, Kohli reflected at how the team is preparing themselves for the Champions Trophy. India will get into the title defense of the ICC major trophy in June this year in England.

While most other teams have a handy ODI matches lined up before the ICC mega event, India finds itself in a position wherein they are left with no ODIs to play before the Champions Trophy. Many would term it to be a handicap, but skipper Virat Kohli absolutely quashed this idea. Looking at the brighter side, Kohli remarked that playing T20Is will help the team get better in the death overs.

For the batsmen, he feels that the change will not be a very drastic one as they change gears from Test format to ODIs. India are slated to play one off Test against Bangladesh next before hosting Australia for a 4-match Test series.

Also read – Virender Sehwag in awe of Kedar Jadhav and his power hitting

“It’s not such a bad thing. The more T20 cricket we play, we will be better at our death bowling. As far as our batting is concerned, we will look to maintain our existing techniques, and just using T20s and ODIs as an extension of Test cricket and not necessarily having to be reckless and slog every ball,” quoted the India captain.

He further mentioned that the key to succeed will be understanding the conditions in England. He stressed that the team will try not to ‘overdo’ the things.

“It’s very important to understand how to score in those conditions and you need to have a solid base and balance at the crease to be able to score runs in competitive conditions. The focus will be on not trying to overdo things and play good conventional cricket,” he added further.

India lost the final ODI at Kolkata, but they had a lot of positives to take from the game. Kedar Jadhav and Hardik Pandya stitched a 104 run stand in the lower order to keep the hopes alive till the very end. Kohli cited that the youngsters stepping up gives him immense confidence going into Champions Trophy.

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“It gives us a lot of confidence going into the Champions Trophy to have two guys good enough to counter pace and swing. Two youngsters stepping up was more special than experienced guys stepping up,” Virat conceded.

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