JOIN OUR WHATSAPP CHANNEL
India vs South Africa, World Cup 2019: "I have understood how to tackle pressure", says Virat Kohli
India take on South Africa today
Ready to lead Team India for the very first time in a World Cup, skipper Virat Kohli has said that he has learnt to deal with the pressure that comes with representing a nation obsessed with cricket.
Acknowledging that the country always wants him to get to a hundred every time he walks out to bat, Kohli further said that making right decisions on the fieeld is a gradual process.
Kohli has the distinction of of getting to tons in India's opening games in the World Cup in 2011 against Bangladesh and then in 2015 versus Pakistan. On asked whether he could score another hundred in the opener, Kohli said that dealing with the expectations are now part of his life.
"Look, when you perform and you perform for a long time, expectations are always there and I sort of understood how to go along with the expectations," Kohli told the reporters.
"You don't go out there to prove anything to anyone, which is a fact, but you have to accept that expectations are going to be there."
"When I walk out to bat, come down the stairs, people will say we need a hundred and all those kind of things will happen. For me, that's just a part of the process now."
"It's not something that I don't want to hear, or something that I think people should not tell me because when you do well, people obviously want to see you do well again and again because they want to see the team win."
As a leader, Kohli has often made some tactical errors in the past, but adjusting and learning from him is what is important.
"The errors you would make when you are not that aware of game situations. They will slowly start to taper off as you play more and more cricket. So I think what happens also is when you have experienced people in your team who have also grown with you as cricketers, eventually you all start making good decisions."
"No one can make all good decisions or right decisions all the time, so important is to try and make the right decision, but own up to your mistakes and accept the errors as well, which I think with time everyone sort of understands that process well, which also is happening to me slowly."
