Virat Kohli has said that not being able to help Royal Challengers Bangalore win more matches bothered him the most this season and not his prolonged lean patch with the bat.
Kohli, on Thursday, got back to form with a 54-ball 73 as RCB defeated table-toppers Gujarat Titans by eight wickets to stay alive in IPL 2022 playoff race.
“It was an important game I was disappointed that I haven’t done much for my team and that is what bothers me, not the stats,” said Kohli, who was also adjudged player of the match. “Today was a game where I was able to create an impact for the team. Puts us in a good position.
“You just need to keep the perspective right. You need to understand there are expectations because of what you have achieved and what you have done over so many years. And sometimes what happens is that in the need to perform and live up to those standards you kind of forget the process that why you ended up performing so well or so much over the years,” player of the match Kohli said.
Kohli also spoke about his process before the Gujarat match.
“You just need to go back to the drawing board and say you know what I just want to look at the ball and hit it. Sometimes you can think of all the things that can go wrong and not the things that can go right when you are on the field. So I worked really hard before this game. I batted about 90 minutes in the net yesterday. I kept backing myself every ball. I wanted clarity every ball that I played.
“And I was able to achieve that for 90 minutes. So I came to this game very free. And relaxed that I can back myself every ball out there and not think of what if something goes wrong. So that’s something that you can tend to go into when you have a lot of expectations from yourself,” Kohli said.
The former India captain added that if he struggled with bad luck recently, he also had some good fortune in the past.
“It’s in that spur of that moment that you feel like why is this happening to me?” he tells Star Sports. “But if you go back to 2018 England, my first innings I was dropped on 22, I got 149. The juggernaut of 2014 could have started all over again. But it didn’t.
“There are so many things (that go wrong but) you can’t complain about. I can pick and choose so many moments when I was dropped, I was lucky, and then I played probably some of the best innings of my career. Yes you feel disappointed, but if I am standing here being ungrateful, then I don’t think it’s fair. Because I have been blessed with a lot. I just want to keep working hard, just keep my head down and try to help my team as much as I can,” he said.
Kohli said the first boundary off Mohammed Shami gave him the confidence to build the match-winning innings.
“With the very first shot of Shami, I felt I could hit length balls over the fielder’s head. I knew that tonight was the night when I could kick on. It has been wonderful that I have got so much support in this edition. I am forever grateful to all the love that I have never seen before,” Kohli said.
In 14 league matches this season, Kohli scored 309 runs at a strike rate of 117.94. He also made two fifties.
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