Press Trust of India
Mohali, Nov 7: In spite of India winning the first Test against South Africa by a comfortable margin of 108 runs, Test skipper Virat Kohli stated Saturday that the margin of victory was not as emphatic as it may have appeared.
“Yes, we won comfortably, that’s okay,” Kohli told reporters after the end of the match. “But then it was not as easy as the margin might suggest. There were mistakes that we made and we need to reflect on that and rectify those by going back to the drawing board before the start of the second Test.
Kohli, however, was not ready to accept the fact that the pitch led to the Indian batting collapse in both the innings. “I would say it was errors in shot selections,” asserted the Indian captain. We made errors rather than fear of spin. We made shot judgment errors. We know that it has been committed; it will be reflected upon and corrected, next time we come out to play,” Kohli added.
Kohli also agreed that lack of domestic cricket could have led the players to lose touch with spin bowling. “Could be,” he said when asked. “We have played a lot of cricket away from home and we have not played on turning wickets for some time now. So maybe you guys could be right on this issue.”
In spite of the spinners bagging 19 wickets in the game, Kohli insisted that it was the bowlers’’ skills more than the pitch playing a role in their success.
“There weren’t many balls that bounced atrociously or turned square. The pitch had something to offer, but it was the skills of the bowlers that helped them capture wickets,” pointed out Kohli. “There were edges and those were the mistakes of the batsmen. The wicket did not have much of a role in that.”
