It was a humbling experience for Virat Kohli, who has been a champion batter for India across all formats for 15 years and despite owning the T20 World Cup stage for so many editions, nothing seemed to work for him. Coming into the final, Kohli had scored just 75 runs in the first seven innings but right on queue, as skipper Rohit Sharma and coach Rahul Dravid predicted, the former India captain got back to his usual best and laid a massive platform for his side in the final in Barbados against South Africa.
Asked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the interaction with the whole team on their arrival in Delhi on Thursday, July 4 about how it all came together for him after an up and down tournament and Kohli said that, the way his day and campaign went, it was just meant to happen.
“Thank you for inviting us all here. That day [final], I will forever remember it. I was not able to contribute as much as I wanted to do. I told Rahul Dravid at one point that I was not able to do justice to myself and this team. He told me that he had the belief that I will deliver when the situation arises,” Kohli said.
“I told Rohit Sharma also, when we walked out to bat (in the final) I was not very confident, but after I scored three fours in first four deliveries, I told Rohit ‘what is this game? One day, you feel you won’t even be able to score a run. And another day, you feel like it’s all coming together’. Especially when wickets fell, I wanted to surrender myself to the team. That was my only focus. I was in the zone. After that, I realised that whatever is meant to happen will happen. This (the triumph) was bound to happen for me, and for the team.
“Even in the end, when the game headed toward a tense finish, we lived every ball. The match was literally a sea-saw. At one point, the hope was gone. After that Hardik Pandya took a wicket, it changed and we came back with every passing delivery,” he further said.
When further pressed about what he was feeling after scoring 75 runs in seven innings and if he talked to his family during that tough phase, Kohli replied that the time zone didn’t allow for him to talk to the family much but he had to keep his ego aside for a bit to get back to his best which he did when it mattered the most.
“Thankfully, the difference in time zone meant that I couldn’t talk to my family much. My mom tends to get worked a bit. But whatever I was trying to do, it wasn’t happening. So, that’s what I thought when you think ‘I will do everything’, that’s when your ego decides to take over and you go away from the game a bit. That’s why I had to leave it and like I said, the game situation was such, I had no place for ego and had to leave it for the team. So when I respected the game, it returned the favour,” Kohli further added.
