India vs Australia | We are playing to win or else I’ll leave the ball to hit the stumps, says Virat Kohli

With the series against Australia considered as the final preparation for the Indian team ahead of the upcoming World Cup, the team management is making changes in the playing XIs almost for all the games. Meanwhile, the T20I series has come to an end and they are now all set for the ODI challenge with the series starting from tomorrow in Hyderabad.

Ahead of the first ODI, the Indian captain has made his intentions clear that he wants the team to win the series but at the same time, the management needs to test certain players at certain situations to know their role in the team.

“We are playing to win the series or else I’ll leave the ball to hit the stumps. As I said earlier, if we want to see how a few guys play in a certain situation, we’ll play them again in that situation. It’s not like if a guy is not playing in a certain situation, he doesn’t have the ability,” Kohli said at the press conference a day before the first ODI, reported The Indian Express. 

“We could not win the T20 series because in the first match, we didn’t play good cricket and in the second match, Australia played better than us. I think it’s important you understand why we lost. From outside, it’s easy to say, they don’t have the heart to play. We always want to win games for India. If we only had to experiment, we would have got out for 50 as everybody would have got out trying to hit sixes. If you see it negatively, you’ll only be able to extract negative things but if you look at it positively, you’ll be able to take positive things,” he concluded.

Going into the five-match ODI series, the team management would want to make things clear in mind for the team combination ahead of the World Cup which is scheduled to start after the 12th edition of the Indian Premier League. Meanwhile, the Indian skipper has made it clear that the T20 league will have no impact on the team selection for the World Cup.  

“I don’t see the IPL having any influence on World Cup selection. I think that will be very, very radical sort of analysis. We need to have a solid team. Before we head into the IPL, we need to be absolutely clear of what team we want for the World Cup. I don’t see anything changing on how the IPL goes for any of the players. If one or two players do not have a good IPL season, it doesn’t mean that they are out of the picture for the World Cup. Those things are not going to matter,” the Indian captain explained. 

“We will have to think about the combinations. I don’t think playing a bowler less is a good idea because with the extra fielder in till the 40th over, it becomes very difficult to sort of get a few guys to chip in with a few overs here and there. We will have to work out the batting combination to try and give game-time to the guys we want to. But, I don’t see the bowling combination changing.”

Kohli heaped praise on KL Rahul for his two good knocks against the Aussies in the two-match T20I series saying,

“It augurs really well. KL, when he plays well, is operating at a different level I feel. We have seen him do that in the IPL last year and in patches over the last season we played as a team. It’s very difficult to find a consistent player, who can play good cricketing shots and still win you games at a strike-rate of over 140 or 150. He has all the shots and has a solid game as well. It will be interesting to see what happens in the final World Cup squad. Definitely, he has made a strong case for himself. It’s good he’s in great nick and hopefully he can carry it forward.”