Virat Kohli has admitted that his failure to get a hundred for more than three years in Test cricket did affect him to a certain extent. The former captain finally broke the shackles during his 186 in Ahmedabad in the final Test against Australia.
“To be honest, I’ve led the complications to grow on me a little bit because of my own shortcomings. I think the desperation to get to the three-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... because I always took the pride in performing for the team when it needed me, in difficult conditions and difficult situations,” Kohli told Rahul Dravid during a free-flowing chat on bcci.tv.
Kohli made it clear that he was never driven to perform by milestones.
“The fact that I wasn’t able to do that was bothering 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 said.
Kohli said that he is happy to have got 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 up 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 WTC final. I will definitely be going there pretty relaxed,” he said.
Kohli credited his fitness to being able to bat in different ways which help him excel in all formats.