Virat Kohli: To be honest; I’ve led the complications to grow on me a little bit because of my shortcomings
Virat Kohli was asked about whether or not the century drought in Tests was ‘hard’ for him when he joined India’s head coach Rahul Dravid for a chat after the completion of the Ahmadabad Test and the batter responded in a ‘brutally honest’ manner.
Virat Kohli scored 186 runs for India in the first innings of the Ahmadabad Test against Australia, marking the first time in more than 1200 days that he has scored triple digits in a Test.
The biggest chunk of the last three years wasn’t the best in Kohli’s career; the batter found it difficult to score big runs in all three formats of the game. However, Kohli’s will to bounce back paid off and in a matter of months he has multiple centuries in all three formats of the game.
But, Kohli was asked about whether or not the century drought in Tests was ‘hard’ for him when he joined India’s head coach Rahul Dravid for a chat after the completion of the Ahmadabad Test. The batter responded in a ‘brutally honest’ manner.
In a video shared by BCCI.TV, Dravid asked Kohli if it was ‘hard’ for him to have not scored a Test century for such a long period.
In response, Virat said:
“To be honest, I’ve led the complications to grow on me a little bit because of my shortcomings. I think the desperation to get the 3-figure mark is something that can grow on you as a batsman. We’ve all experienced that at some stage or the other. I think I let that happen to me to a certain extent.”
“But also the flip side to it is that I am not a guy who is happy with 40 or 45 runs. I am someone who always takes pride in performing for the team. It’s not like Virat Kohli should stand out. When I am batting on 40, I know I can get a 150 here and that will help my team. That was eating me up a lot. Why am I not able to get that big score for the team I always took the pride in performing for the team when it needed me, in difficult conditions and difficult situations,”
he added.
When asked why he wasn’t able to score a hundred runs, Kohli gave a “brutally honest” response, saying that it concerned him that he wasn’t able to contribute as much with the bat as he did in the past.
“The fact that I wasn’t able to do that was bother me. Not so much the milestone as such as I don’t play for it. A lot of people ask me this question, ‘how do you keep scoring a hundred?’. I always told them, a hundred is something that happens along the way within my goal which is to bat as long as possible for the team and get as many runs as possible. So, the milestone is never my focus. But yes, I have to be brutally honest, it does become a little complicated because the moment you step out of the hotel room, right from the guy outside the room to the guy in the lift to the bus driver, everyone is saying we want a hundred. So, it’s like, it does play on your mind,”
he asserted.
Toward the end of the chat, the 34-year-old said that he is happy to have gotten the monkey off his back before the World Test Championship final.
“But I think that’s the beauty of playing so long as well, to have these complications come and overcome these challenges. When it comes together, like it did in this game, that gives you an extra gust of air to go beyond, go further, and start enjoying cricket a lot more and be excited for what’s to come. I am just happy that it happened at the right time, before the World Test Championship final. I will be going there pretty relaxed,”
he concluded.
