Centurion: Virat Kohli has literally made the 22-yard strip his own kingdom and the India captain is not in a mood to “compete with anyone” for any specific “tag” such as the best batsman in world cricket.
Kohli was again at the forefront scoring a staggering 558 runs (including three hundreds) in his team’s 5-1 ODI series win against South Africa but made it clear that he has never ever played cricket to be a “headline grabber”.
“At this stage, I don’t feel like competing with anyone. It’s all about how I prepare before the game and what my work ethics are and how I am feeling on game day. My only motivation is to get into that frame of mind. I am not competing with anyone at all,” Kohli said.
The key to consistency is not thinking too ahead of himself. “But if you are thinking about being ahead of someone else then you will be found out very soon by this game and you are compromising on what the team needs as well,” the skipper said.
Asked if he can now be termed as the best batsman in world cricket, the straight-talking skipper said: “As I said, I don’t want any tags. I don’t want any headlines. I just go out there and do my job, it is up to the people to write what they write, I don’t want to be called anything.”
The skipper once again made it clear that public perceptions are least of his concerns as long as his team knows his worth. “What matters is what the management thinks about me, what I think about the players and what the players think about me. That’s all that matters to me. I know the headlines change from day in and day out. Tomorrow I play a bad shot and get out for zero everyone will conveniently do what they want to do, so it’s not my job to say anything about what I do.
“Yes, if I make a mistake I will come here and accept it. I have never been one to give excuses and will remain like that. But I am never one to come here and praise myself. I can never do that because as I said, this is a job for me. I am not doing anyone a favour,” the skipper’s statement showed that how much the criticisms in the past has hurt him.
While India’s ODI juggernaut has rolled on, there have been questions raised about the quality of opposition playing ODI cricket and the skipper’s views made it clear that he wasn’t amused one bit. Questioned if this was India’s best overseas win, pat came a terse response: “You people can tell!” “One month back we were a very bad team. Now we are being asked these questions. We haven’t changed our mindset,” added Kohli.
