Chennai: The contrasting emotions that the outcome of any sporting contest can engender in the rival camps couldn’t have been more revealing than on the fifth day of the fifth Test between India and England here on Tuesday. After inflicting a whopping innings and 75-run defeat on England to win the series by a handsome 4-0 margin, the victorious Virat Kohli spoke like a leader embodying the virtue of fulfilment at completing a task with consummate perfection.
His counterpart, Alastair Cook, meanwhile, looked like he would have rather wanted the earth to cave in and gobble him up than to live with the agony of a 0-4 taint besmirching his legacy as a leader of victory-starved men. Cook has, on more than one occasion, stated that he would like to part ways with captaincy and surely this isn’t the annulment he would have foreseen, if at all it comes to that.
Although he was adjudged the man of the series, Kohli wanted to regard this series triumph as a collective effort. “I would say it’s a complete performance from the time we were put under pressure in the first Test. We came back strongly to win the next four Tests. What is even more gratifying is that three of those wins have come despite my losing the toss. The lower-order contribution is something that stands out for me in this series,” said Virat.
