With his team in a more comfortable position than hosts England, there is not much India captain Virat Kohli has to worry about. Ahead of the big game tomorrow at Edgbaston, Kohli put his weight behind all-rounder Vijay Shankar and the middle-order, which has not fired yet in the tournament.
Shankar was brought in at number four against Afghanistan. According to Kohli, the all-rounder isn’t doing much wrong. “He [Shankar] had a decent game against Pakistan. I think, against Afghanistan, on that pitch he looked really assured. Shot selection, again, we discussed with him for that game. Last game, [against the West Indies], he looked really good, but he got a beautiful ball from Kemar Roach. So, you can't really sit down and pinpoint things, but I personally felt he looked really solid,” the India skipper said.
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Kohli also defended the middle-order, which has looked under pressure, with Mahendra Singh Dhoni at the centre of it. But the skipper played down the middle-order's inability to force the pace of the game, saying that the team was not expecting the middle-order to come up with fireworks. Instead, given the conditions, ensure that the team is in a winning position. “That discussion is always going to go on because we have had such a strong top order that these guys have hardly had a chance to bat. When they bat, out of four times, if once or twice it doesn't come off, then we feel like, oh, it's not a strong middle-order, but we overlook the times that it has come good.
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"If you look at the first three games that we played, the contribution was absolutely fine. We were getting 300 plus, and no one said anything. Then one game where we could not accelerate as much as we'd liked to have as a team, everyone says that maybe it's not as strong. What matters for us in the change room is even a 25-, 30-run contribution, if it's getting to a score which can win you a game of cricket, that's more than enough for us.”
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Kohli also backed the Indian template of not going all out from the very first ball, but assessing the wicket and coming up with valuable, solid partnerships. Unlike England, who have based their entire strategy on playing aggressive and thrilling cricket, looking to bat out oppositions. “We are not looking at entertainment out there in the middle. We are not looking at playing cricket which is looking flashy. We want to be calculated. We want to play percentage cricket because, as I said, the team that handles pressure well is going to win games of cricket which are hanging in the balance,” Kohli said.
And, finally on Dhoni, whose low strike rate hogged the limelight in the match against Afghanistan, Kohli was dismissive about the concerns. “He [Dhoni] knows exactly what he needs to do. I don't think that he's ever been a cricketer that's ever had the need to be told what exactly he needs to do. After the last game, he went into the nets. He worked hard. He put in a performance and got us to a winning total [against the West Indies], and we won the game. We are very, very happy and comfortable with, as I said, where we stand as a team and how the batting is going at the moment.”
