Raina and I decided to chase 321 broken down into two T20 games, recalls Virat Kohli

Raina and I decided to chase 321 broken down into two T20 games, recalls Virat Kohli

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Virat Kohli recalled his 133 against Sri Lanka in 2012

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BCCI

Kohli has recalled the 2012 Commonwealth Series fixture against Sri Lanka where India had to chase a target of 321 and he, along with Suresh Raina, decided to break it down into two T20 games. Hailed as the master of the chase, Kohli has recorded 26 hundreds while batting second in ODIs.

Before scoring his famous 183 against Pakistan in the 2012 Asia Cup, India captain Virat Kohli had one of his first big successful chases in ODIs when India played Sri Lanka in the Commonwealth tri-series in Australia. In the 11th fixture of the series, Kumar Sangakkara and Tillakaratne Dilshan had both scored hundreds to post a total of 320/4. Having lost the previous two games against Sri Lanka and Australia, India were struggling in the three-team tournament and the target of 321 was indeed huge. Kohli recalled his unbeaten knock of 133 runs off 86 balls taking India to a comfortable seven-wicket victory.

The Indian skipper, on Saturday, revealed that he and Suresh Raina (40* off 24) had decided to chase the target of 321 runs in 40 overs against Sri Lanka by breaking it into two T20 games. India had already lost the wickets of Tendulkar, Sehwag, and Gambhir, following which Raina joined Kohli in the 28th over. 

"When we were warming up, the chat was not all that optimistic I still remember because our chances were very bleak, we did not have a successful Australia tour and the motivation factor was very low. The bonus point was something which we weren't even thinking about. It was strange and suddenly out of nowhere we got that boost, Sachin paaji and Viru bhai had a brilliant partnership at the front, Gauti (Gautam Gambhir) bhai and me had a good partnership. Then Raina came and changed the momentum of the game and then he and I discussed that we need to break it down into two T20 games and that was the first kind of revelation for chasing the big totals for me," recalled Kohli, on an Instagram live chat with R Ashwin.

"I remember that whole season from that Test hundred in Adelaide to the ODI matches, that was the season where I realised many things about my game, you want to be that guy who wants to be feared. This led to the innings that you were talking about and yes it was quite special."

The Indian skipper is currently ranked at the top spot in the ICC ODI rankings while he holds second place in the Test rankings.

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