England vs India: Batting collapse not technical flaw but mental – Virat Kohli

Indian captain Virat Kohli urged the Indian cricket fans to restrain from jumping into conclusions about his side’s batting failure in the narrow-defeat at Edgbaston and asked the batsmen to be more composed during their time in the middle.

The skipper made an excellent 149 in the first innings and followed it up with another half-century in the second, but found no support from the other batsmen as India went down to a heart-breaking 31-run defeat in the opening Test.

“We should not judge so fast, jump into conclusions. As a team, we keep patience. We don’t judge so fast. We don’t see any pattern to (the failures). As far as wickets falling in a heap is concerned, it’s not about technique, it is more of a mental aspect,” Kohli said at the pre-match conference.

“It depends on how you think about it after the dismissal. There must be a clear plan on how to face the first 20-30 balls; more often than not that plan does not involve aggression. There we need some composure. As a batting unit, we have discussed that.”

He also said that the team does not worry about the margin of defeat but to rectify and cut down the errors in the next game.

“From outside it looks very bad, especially since it is Test cricket and we are playing in England, where it is anyway difficult (due to seaming conditions). But we only need to bring down the margin of error. Beyond that, we don’t need to worry too much.”

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With the pitch looking dry and under hot conditions there have been speculations about India playing the second spinner, but the Indian skipper said that decision was still not made.

“It could be a tempting thought. The pitch looks very hard, the surface very dry. It has been very hot in London for the last couple of months. There is good grass cover in it and that is required basically to keep the wicket together.

The pitch is going to be an all-around one; if batsmen bat well they can get runs, obviously the Dukes ball in overcast conditions (will come into play), and when the wicket wears off, the spinners can come in. It is a tempting thought to field two spinners, but we have to take a call on that depending on the team balance. But two spinners are definitely in contention,” he added.

The defeat at Edgbaston was the third occasion when Kohli had scored a century but the team lost and when asked if it hurt much more that his maiden Test century in England could not lead the team to victory, he said that winning is more important than his milestones.

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“It doesn’t only hurt when you score runs and don’t win. It hurts when you are not scoring runs as well, and the team is not doing well.

“If I hadn’t got the runs and we had won, I would have got a totally different feeling, a very natural aspect of playing a team sport. My job as a batsman when I go out there is to score runs as a team,”

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The World No.1 cautioned that he may not be able to score all the time but it doesn’t matter as long as the team wins.

“I am trying my level best to do that whenever possible. It is not going to happen every time, but when it does I want to try and contribute as much as possible,” he said.

“It is unfortunate we haven’t been able to cross the line after coming so close. That is the only thing we are looking at. It doesn’t matter whether I get the runs or Jinks (Rahane) does or Vijay does or KL Rahul does. As long as we cross the line, is the only thing that matters.”