If our headline doesn't make you laugh, read what India skipper Virat Kohli said after Saturday's embarrassing loss to Australia in Adelaide.
Virat Kohli leads a dejected Indian team after a humiliating loss to Australia in the opening Test at the Adelaide Oval on Saturday. Pic/Getty Images
India captain Virat Kohli can't remember a "worse batting performance" by his team than the lowest-ever Test score of 36 against Australia here but at the same time, he urged people not to "make mountain out of a molehill".
Kohli did speak about batsmen "lacking intent" to take forward the lead and although he didn't take names, Mayank Agarwal's approach (9 off 40 balls) in the morning was hard to explain when the team had a 62-run overnight advantage.
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"I don't think we have ever had a worse batting performance than this. So we can only go upwards from here and you will see guys stepping up and realising their true characters," Kohli said in the post-match press conference after his team lost the first Test to Australia by eight wickets.
The Indian captain desperately tried but looked at pains to defend the indefensible—another inept overseas batting show with six successive scores of less than 250 just this year.
"It's a strange one to be honest in my opinion. The ball didn't do much but we didn't have too much intent of going out there and taking the game forward," he lamented. "Everything happened so quickly that no one could make any sense of it," Kohli was unable to fathom what hit his team.
Under Kohli, save the 2018 series in Australia, the Indian team has had way too many batting collapses including six on the trot, starting with New Zealand early this year, but strangely the skipper felt there isn't anything alarming about it.
"I don't think it's alarming and we can very well sit here and make a mountain out of a molehill, it's basically looking at things in the right perspective," he reasoned.
In fact, there has been close to 15 innings in SENA countries (South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia) where the team has failed but the skipper could remember only six in 8-9 years. "You have just spoken about five or six batting collapses in eight to nine years if I am not wrong. There will definitely be collapses again and again and we have to accept our mistakes and what we need to work on.
"This is not club-level cricket and obviously there is a lot of pressure involved at different stages and as batsmen, we take pride in doing our job for the team. We are not vulnerable to getting out cheaply or vulnerable to a collapse," he asserted.
For Kohli, there is no point looking at the past and he only wants to think how plans can be re-laid. "Rather than going into the past as to what has happened and let it linger on in future, I don't think that's productive at all."
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