Sydney: Crediting bowlers for Indian team’s remarkable turnaround after a winless show preceding the World Cup, star batsman Virat Kohli feels it is the perfect time to beat Australia in Thursday’s semifinal and do justice to their performance in the showpiece event.
“There couldn’t be a better time for us (to beat Australia). It is an opportunity for us to do justice to the way we have played so far in Australia, and we haven’t had the results,” Kohli told cricket.com.au.
India have won all their seven games going into the semifinal at the Sydney Cricket Ground, after losing the Test series 0-2 and turning up last in the tri-nation event in early part of the Australian summer.
Glenn Maxwell, earlier in the week, reminded the Indians that they are yet to beat Australia during the long tour.
Kohli spoke about how the team prepared in the little time it got leading up to the 50-over showpiece event.
“We felt as a group that we need to step up and make corrections now. We don’t really have too much time because we can’t afford to go into the World Cup thinking ‘okay fine, we have things to work on but we can do that over the period of time’.
“So we immediately went to work, wrote things down, what are the things we need to improve on,” said Kohli, who has not crossed the 50-run mark since hitting a fine hundred in the tournament opener against Pakistan.
If the batsmen have played their part then the bowlers, ably led by Mohammed Shami (17 wickets in 6 games), got their act together in the quadrennial extravaganza. Kohli said the bowlers’ stand-out show has made the biggest difference. “The way the bowlers have reacted and the way they have performed with the composure and the confidence and the aggression all together, it has been wonderful to watch.
“So we expect the bowlers to step up if you want to beat quality sides in the world and the way they have done this in this World Cup has been commendable.
“We have played the right kind of cricket and the difference now is how our bowling attack has come into play in this World Cup taking 70 wickets in seven games. That’s probably been the difference, and if we continue to do that we have a great chance come game day,” added Kohli.
Finch confident
Meanwhile Australia opener Aaron Finch on Tuesday exuded confidence of successfully tackling the Indian pace attack in the semi-finals of the cricket World Cup, here on Thursday.
“They’ve (India pace trio) been bowling well. Shami is up there with the leading wicket-takers of the tournament — Yadav, Mohit Sharma, they’ve been bowling well as a group. With our side, we are confident that we can negate that,” Finch said during a media interaction at the SCG. Finch admitted that India have some quality spinners in Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja but they would have their gameplan in place to counter them. (PTI)
