Virat Kohli credited the bench strength of the Indian team in their clean sweep of Sri Lanka. (Source: PTI)
India captain Virat Kohli said that his team’s whitewash of Sri Lanka across all formats was “very special.” India beat Sri Lanka by seven wickets in the standalone T20I that the two sides played in Colombo. With that, they completed a highly successful tour of Sri Lanka in which they whitewashed the hosts in a three-match Test series and a five-match ODI series apart from the lone T20I. “It [the whitewash across formats] hasn’t been done before,” he said in the post-match presentation ceremony.
India had experimented with their line up in the match, deciding to let KL Rahul open instead of Ajinkya Rahane in place of Shikhar Dhawan and giving chances to Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel. “Credit to the boys,” said the Indian captain, “The bench strength is coming up beautifully. We tried a few things, the results are amazing to see.”
Kohli himself has been in top form. He scored consecutive centuries in the ODI series, the second of which was his 30th century in the 50-over format. He is hence tied with Ricky Ponting for the second most tons in One Day cricket. He had also scored a century in the first Test and was man of the match in the stand alone T20I with an aggressive knock of 82 off 54 balls that practically won India the match. “Personally, I look to back my strengths and play cricketing shots,” said Kohli about his performance with the bat, “I’ve tried to mould my game for all formats. I want to play all the games.”
