MS Dhoni was in complete awe of Virat Kohli after the latter played undoubtedly his best T20I innings to guide India to a famous win over Australia. Kohli was simply outstanding as his 82 floored the Kangaroos and secured India’s berth for the semi-finals. In his conference with the press, skipper MS Dhoni admitted that Kohli was simply an incredible player.
“I think it was an incredible innings,” Dhoni said. “The fact is this wasn’t an easy wicket to bat on. Back-of-length deliveries were difficult to get away, especially against the spinners. The good thing was I don’t think they bowled too many spinners. Also, in between, Kohli was hampered when he had the partnership with Yuvraj and they couldn’t convert those one-and-a-half runs to twos. Maybe because of that, to some extent, we had to chase maybe one run per over more than what we would have liked,” said Dhoni.
“It was tremendous batting effort from him, superb batting. Especially the areas where you want to score runs, where you want to play big shots. I think more often than not, it is about selection of shots and execution of shots. I feel overall, Virat was very good not just with his strokeplay but also in the running between the wickets – you take the minimum risk if you can run fast,” said Dhoni, dissecting the minute aspects about Kohli’s batting.
Regarding the crucial aspect of Yuvraj Singh’s injury, Dhoni said, “Especially tomorrow morning or close to 24 hours you will get a good opinion about what kind of injury it is. “We would definitely like to keep a replacement ready like you see how Bhuvneshwar [Kumar] is travelling with us. So that he is in touch with cricket, and travelling with us. So that he’s in that mental space where if he has to play immediately, he’s ready to perform. So we’ll definitely call for a replacement if the physio says it’s really bad, we’ll take it forward from there.”