Virat Kohli wants to focus only on winning the Bengaluru test

Kohli wants to carry forward the winning momentum in Bengaluru

Indian Test captain Virat Kohli seems a confident man ahead of the second Test of the Freedom series, scheduled to start in Bengaluru from Saturday. After clinching a win on a turning track in Mohali, Kohli is confident that his team will carry forward the momentum going into the second test, reports IBN Live.

The quality of the pitch in Mohali raised eyebrows all around, but Kohli seems undeterred by all the non-essential talks and only wants to focus on winning the Bengaluru test. "It's only disappointing if you are looking to take what is written or said to heart, or think about it too much. We focus on the process and don't really think about what's being written or what's being said. The fact of the matter is, we won a Test match and that's what we feel good about as a team,” Kohli told reporters.

"We are not worried about any external factors or what's being discussed about things that are not in our control. If someone chooses to say or write about something which they feel is a topic of interest, that's their choice. It's up to us if we take it to heart or sit down and feel disappointed. We are not at all disappointed. We won a game of cricket. We are very happy about it," he continued.

The skipper also stressed about the wickets, saying that result-oriented pitches would pull in more crowds to the stadium. “We should be delighted that we are getting result-oriented wickets because then you will have more people coming in to watch Test matches rather than you know criticising the pitches and saying it is not fair," he stated.

The 27-year old asserted that fans played a big role in the team’s performance and hoped fans in Bengaluru would come out in big numbers to watch the exciting series.

“Obviously, you like playing in front of full stadiums and full crowds but eventually you are focusing on the ball that is bowled to you and as a bowler you are focusing on the ball that you have to bowl. We hope we get more number of people to watch this Test match because it is an exciting series, it is between two exciting and very strong teams."

Kohli heaped rich praise on the duo of Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara and said that other batsmen had a lot to learn a lot from the prolific batting pair. “We all are very proud of both of them (Pujara and Vijay), the way they batted in the last game. We can learn a lot from them in the way they applied themselves.”

“Our batsmen didn't apply themselves as much as we wanted to as a batting group and we are aware of that. But not taking credit away from the way both of them batted. I think they kept us in the game throughout and that is very important I think, two guys standing up in each innings. Their contributions in both the innings were very crucial to us,” he continued.