India suffered a massive defeat in the first Test of the ongoing 4-match series against Australia. Before the start of the series, almost every cricket pundit across the world had predicted that India will whitewash Australia and repeat what they did in 2012-13. But, it wasn’t to be. Australia outplayed India in all three departments of the game and won the match by a massive margin of 333 runs.
This defeat came as a big shock for the Indian cricket fans who were hoping for a dominating performance by their team. After the first Test, Indian captain Virat Kohli was brutally honest in saying India deserved nothing after a poor performance.
Here are some excerpts from his post-match press conference:
“The batting let us down in both the innings. Our application was not good. There were no partnerships worth mentioning — it used to be an area which filled us with pride. The batsmen need to pull their socks up. The batting was not up to standards, it showed how we shouldn’t bat, that’s all I will say.”
“We got outplayed in this game. We got to take it on the chin, accept that they outplayed us. It was our worst batting display in the last two years. We were not good enough on any of the three days. It was the case of us not applying ourselves too well. We need to see what we did wrong.”
“It’s just another international game, no big deal. Just as you should be calm and composed and not get over-excited when we win, the same way we should stay the same way when we lose. We take it on the chin.”
“I won’t blame the bowlers at all. Our batsmen put us in that position. It’s very difficult to come back after conceding such a big lead. The bowlers tried their level best. Someone like Umesh Yadav bowling like that on a slow wicket was great to see.”
“They exploited it better than us. They put us under pressure throughout and deserved to win this game. Credit to them that they played better than us.”
