At one stage India were reeling at 31 for 4, and Virat Kohli was batting on 12 off 21 balls. However, Kohli turned the match around but said at that point he thought he was ‘messing the game.’
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“When I was 12 off 21, I was like ‘I am really messing this game up. I am not putting ball in the gaps,’” Kohli told Star Sports after the match.
“But when you have experience and understand the value of batting deep, that’s always been my role playing for India. I know that I can do a lot of the power-hitting towards the end of the innings,” he added.
Kohli produced an astonishing performance to lead India to a stunning final-ball triumph over arch-rival Pakistan in a dramatic Twenty20 World Cup opener on Sunday.
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Arriving at the crease with India under pressure, Kohli delivered one of the finest innings played at the MCG to steer India to a four-wicket victory in the Group 2 Super 12 opener.
On his 113-run partnership with Hardik Pandya, he said: “Honestly, I was feeling a lot of pressure at that stage. But then when he came in and he hit a few boundaries, I kind of opened up. That partnership, we didn’t even realise when we got to our 100.”
“We kept talking, we kept running hard and we kept watching their body language. We knew it would turn at some stage, it turned quite late to be honest. We would have liked to do it earlier,” he said.
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India will face the Netherlands on Wednesday in Sydney.
