My responsibility to lead from the front as captain, says Virat Kohli

Virat Kohli

After leading India to a 5-0 whitewash against Sri Lanka, stand-in captain Virat Kohli has said he wants the Indian batsman to show more application in the middle with the bat. The 26-year-old scored a match-winning 139 not out off 126 balls to help his side chase down Sri Lanka’s competitive score of 286 for 8.

However, the right-hander said that he did feel frustrated about the other batsmen not showing the required application in the centre.

“I was a little worried and annoyed (when running out of partners). You have to understand the match situations,” Kohli said in the post-match presentation.

Axar Patel, however, did receive a word of praise from his captain for hanging in there and providing support to him.

“There needs to be more application. Axar (Patel) played a composed innings, he listened to me. The ball wasn't quite coming on. It wasn't easy once the ball got old. I was running out of partners and that is something others need to learn from this on how to maintain composure,” he said.

Kohli also added that as a captain, he should be the first one to take up responsibility and lead the way for others to follow.

“If you want to make others to do something else, it has to start from me. I played the helicopter and it came off well, playing in MS' hometown, it worked well,” he said.

It was tough to bat on that pitch, but Kohli played very well: Mathews

His counterpart Angelo Mathews, who scored his first ODI hundred earlier in the afternoon, said that the pitch was hard to bat on and felt 286 was a good score on that track.

"It was a tough wicket. I thought I needed to hang in there and build a partnership with Thirimanne and later i had a go and it clicked. We batted pretty well and 287 was a huge score on this pitch,” the 27-year-old said.

He also added that they need to wipe out this series as soon as possible from their systems.

"But Kohli batted very well and best of luck to them in Australia. We got to flush this out of the system as soon as possible and need to gear up for the England series," he added.