T20s Against England Another Chance For India To Prepare For Champions Trophy: Virat Kohli

Jan 23, 2017 at 5:01 PM

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T20s Against England Another Chance For India To Prepare For Champions Trophy: Virat Kohli

India on Sunday went down chasing 322 against England and lost the nail-biter with just five runs to spare. With the visitors clinching their maiden win on the tour and India taking the ODI series home with a 2-1 margin, the focus now shifts to the upcoming three T20Is, starting January 26th in Kanpur.

One of India’s prolific run-scorer across formats and captain Virat Kohli said he is excited with the T20Is coming up, adding the format will play as a platform to find him the right balance and strengthen their death bowling ahead of the Champions Trophy.

“It’s not such a bad thing. The more T20s we play, we will get better at death bowling in the ODIs. That will be our advantage.”

Speaking about his side’s batting, which appeared to be the dominant department among all in the ODI series, Kohli said despite the good show from them, they still need to find the right balance between their techniques across formats.

He said players should realise that slogging and reckless batting won’t help every time, but stepping in with a steady head and patience will also be crucial in competitive conditions.

“As far as batting is concerned, obviously the one area we look to focus on is to maintain our batting techniques and use T20s and ODIs as an extension of our Test batting. That means not necessarily getting reckless and slog every ball. It is very important to understand how to score in competitive conditions. The focus will be on not wanting to overdo things.”

England, where India last won their maiden Champions Trophy title four years back, will host this year’s edition too. Having toured that part of the world couple of times, Kohli knows a bit or two about the conditions.

The 28-year-old while addressing the media after the 3rd ODI match, said not wanting to overdo things under those conditions will be the key and that India needs to polish their foundation if they seek to retain the coveted trophy five months from now.

“It’s very important to understand how to score in those conditions, you need to have solid base and balance at the crease to be able to score runs in competitive conditions. I think the focus will be on not wanting to overdo things and at the same time finding a balance between good conventional cricket and at the same time knowing how to score runs with that.”

In the three-match bilateral series, where batsmen from both side made merry, openers from India seem to struggle as hosts in each of the game couldn’t get a good start. Since Rohit Sharma is sidelined due to an injury, the woes in the opening slot will continue but Virat believes the management is looking into the matter and things are expected to sort out soon.

“Earlier opening was never our problem, it’s our middle-order which is sorted now. It’s not that we have to go in search for openers, we already have got good openers. We will address the areas of concern, and will try to correct a few of them.”

The first of the three T20Is between them will be played at Green Park stadium in Kanpur.

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