On Sunday afternoon, all roads in Adelaide led to the Adelaide Oval. The bridge over river Torrens leading to the ground was flocked by a sea of blue clearly outnumbering the green in the ocean of fans. That blue had a lot of reasons to cheer courtesy a cautious 73 from Dhawan, a counter-attacking half century from Suresh Raina and an outstanding century from Virat Kohli on a ground that he has almost made his own. “I could just wrap this ground and take it home,” Kohli said after his century.
It wasn’t a typical Kohli innings on display. He was cautious, watchful and a tad scratchy to begin with. But once he got used to the pace of the wicket and got his eye in, his array of shots began to take center stage in front of the packed Adelaide Oval. India posted 300 on the board and it proved to be more than enough for a clueless Pakistan batting lineup. India captain MS Dhoni was happy with his side’s show and termed is as a ‘complete’ performance.
Our approach has always been positive. The result was not in our favor. There were quite a few areas where we had to improve both in the bowling and the batting department. In fact in this game it clicked together. It’s something that you have to do in tournaments like this. You have to be at your best, and I felt today was one game which was to a lot of extent a very complete game for all of us with a lot of scope for improvement.
Kohli might have taken top honours on Sunday but Raina played perfect foil to a Kohli on-song. For Dhoni, his man had played his role to perfection. “He played the role assigned to him with perfection,” Dhoni said. He was provided with a platform where he could go in and be a bit more expressive. What we really liked was he took a few deliveries initially and then went on to play the big shots. In fact he was more calculated in his innings, and he picked his areas where he wanted to hit. He read the bowlers and put pressure on them. If you can put pressure on the bowlers, you’ll push them to commit more mistakes of bowling where they don’t want to bowl. Overall, including the other batsmen, I think his innings was also special.”
A win is a win and it tastes sweet, especially after going winless this Australian summer. Dhoni maintained that irrespective of the losses, the morale in the team was always high. “The morale of the team was good, though the results were not in our favor. In the Afghanistan game, also, we showed improvement and we were quite consistent. This game was a fantastic game for us as far as the bowling, batting, and the fielding department is concerned, but this can be a benchmark in the coming games. We’ll be playing tougher sides, and hopefully we’ll be able to replicate the performances.
Stressing on the fact of starting the tournament well Dhoni said, “I think winning was important to start off because we have not won a lot of games and Afghanistan was the only one game that we had won. Once you start thinking about all these things, you get caught up with a lot of thoughts, and it was important not to think about the past. It’s something that we will keep getting flashes, but it was important not to get entangled with these thoughts, think more about the process, what needs to be done, but ultimately what will really matter is the present. At times what we have seen is you have pressure of expectation and the burden of your own performance that you want to do. So all of that really plays a part, but I felt the guys did really well because a World Cup opening game against Pakistan, it is a high stake game, but at the same time we don’t want to give it too much of an importance because irrespective of whether you’re playing Pakistan or Australia, the games are important.
Dhoni also spoke about maintain a cleaning record against Pakistan till date but reconfirmed that one couldn’t get carried away by it. “Well, the record is good, but it’s something that I don’t want to get into because there will come a time when we will lose, irrespective of whether it happens this World Cup, next World Cup or four World Cups down the line. It’s not something that will stay until the world exists. No point in really thinking about it. Yes, we are proud of the fact that we have done it, but if you just see the stats, India Pakistan stats, you know we are way behind when it comes to that.”
By: BCCI
