India vs New Zealand Test match: ‘Toss was very important, but...’ - Virat Kohli has a message for his side

IND vs NZ: It was India’s first loss in the ICC World Test Championship and captain Kohli was hurting. He trudged off the field looking on at plenty of questions.

Day 4 of the India vs New Zealand 1st Test began with India on 144 for 4, they were in the arrears by 39 runs and there was a semblance of a chance for the side to dig in take a lead. However, Tim Southee and Trent Boult had other plans. They took the old ball and cast a spell all over the Basin Reserve as India lost their six wickets for 47 runs and New Zealand won the match by 10 wickets. It was India’s first loss in the ICC World Test Championship and captain Kohli was hurting. He trudged off the field looking on at plenty of questions.

Toss did play a huge part in this match and even though coach Ravi Shastri had spoken about taking toss out of the equation, it was the deciding factor in Wellington and it was not lost on the Indian captain.

“Day one it was probably the toss that turned out to be very important,” Kohli said. “But at the same time, as a batting unit, we take a lot of pride in being competitive, and we were just not competitive enough. I don’t think we put their bowlers under enough pressure in the first innings. Anything over 220-230, then you are talking a different language. Even the deficit looks much lesser if you get that score on the board - and if you get the last three batsmen out cheaper, which wasn’t the case... But yeah, that first innings put us behind the game already, and that lead put us under pressure, which was hard to come back from.”

India collapsed twice in the match and this was what hurt their chances and for the skipper this was a big lesson for the side going forward. However, he was not willing to be too hard on the batting crew and backed them to learn from this reversal.

“I think we have to stick to our template that has got us success and not think too much about where we are playing or what kind of pitch we are playing on. Our strength is to put enough runs on the board for our bowlers to get attacking. I think that is something as a batting unit that we need to take more responsibility,” he said.