Virat Kohli led the Indian cricket team was brutally defeated by the Kiwis in the first Test match of the ongoing ICC World Test Championship in Willington. This is the first time that the Indian cricket team suffered a loss of points at the ICC Championship cycle. While on the other hand, the New Zealand cricket team was able to gain 60 points after their win.
Having lost the ODI series by a complete white-wash, the ongoing two-match series was a crucial one for the Indian cricket team. However, the Team Indian cricket team failed to give their best despite having fought back well in the second innings.
New Zealand’s bowling attack outclassed the Indian batting line-up by 10 wickets. The Kiwi bowlers dominated Indian batsmen throughout the match.
After the match, the Indian skipper Virat Kohli faced the heat and opened up about what went wrong during the match. He said:
“Day 1, the toss did turn out to be very important. As a batting unit we take pride in being competitive, but we weren’t. Even scoring 220-230 would’ve been good. That first innings put us behind and then the lead put us under more pressure,”
He added:
“The bowlers toiled well, as a bowling group we’ve taken pride in being competitive. Till the first 7 NZ wickets, we were really good. Wanted to restrict the lead to under 100, but the last runs from their batsmen made things difficult. But bowlers can still be more disciplined, they were not as happy with their bowling performance.”
Virat Kohli appreciated the performances of Ajinkya Rahane and Mayank Agarwal. He also defended Prithvi Shaw, who failed to perform in both the innings. Talking about how they can’t put so much pressure on him, he said:
“You don’t want to be too hard on guys like Shaw. He’s played just 2 overseas Tests. He will figure a way, he will find a way to score runs. Mayank applied himself well, and he’s the only other person apart from Rahane who got us any momentum with the bat. Our strength is to put big scores for our bowlers to bowl at, and that was missing in this match.”
