CENTURION: India skipper Virat Kohli today questioned his team’s commitment after the series loss to South Africa, saying that the repeated fielding mistakes and soft dismissals by the batsmen were simply unacceptable.
In a fiery press conference which saw Kohli arguing with reporters on a couple of questions, the Indian captain pulled up his team-mates for repeated mistakes in the first two Tests.
“At the end of the day one team has to lose. As a team you always try to win. You can accept defeat but not the way we played, the way we let the advantage slip out of our hands, which is not acceptable from a team’s point of view,” a visibly agitated Kohli said after the 135-run drubbing in the second Test.
“So many soft dismissals hurt us a lot. Because you work so hard, prepare for a match, get into good situations, shift the game towards you, and then the momentum shifts because of these mistakes.
“We have repeated these mistakes in both matches. That feels very bad as a team,” he said.
Kohli said the players need to question themselves on what went wrong for them.
“We have not come here to play the way we have done. I’m not going to sit here and try to comfort anyone. We need to be hard on ourselves. We need to ask ourselves if we are giving 120 per cent for the team every time we bowl a ball or play a ball or field a ball.
“We should be reflecting on all our decision-making and all the actions that we have made in this game and the previous game and act upon them. Individuals have to sit and reflect on these things themselves. They do it, I am not saying they don’t reflect on it. We are definitely going to lay out these things in the open,” said Kohli. (AGENCIES)
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