While crediting the team for the match-winning effort, Kohli said: "If you ask me to credit one person for this win, it has to be Kedar Jadhav."
Successfully chasing a target of 351 with 11 deliveries to spare could leave anyone exhausted. Especially when you are Virat Kohli, who was on the field for 50 overs and soon after, was batting in trying conditions for 32.2 overs. That meant, Kohli was on the field for 82.2 out of the 98.1 overs.
Yet, the victorious captain was cheerful in the post-match press conference, even joking once to say, "Today being Sunday, we decided to have some fun".
But on a serious note, Kohli, who scored his 27th ODI hundred, 122, and was guiding India's No. 6, local hero Kedar Jadhav to a superlative 120 at a strike-rate of over 157 said "outstanding," to describe Jadhav's knock.
While crediting the team for the match-winning effort, Kohli said: "If you ask me to credit one person for this win, it has to be Kedar Jadhav."
Kohli was effusive in his praise for Jadhav. "It was outstanding just to have another guy who is willing to do from any situation. He knew how exactly to bat on this pitch. He put a lot of pressure into the (English) spinners. It was one of the best calculative innings I have seen, a strike rate of 150-plus is outstanding. They were all clean shots."
Kohli himself executed some breath-taking shots in his 105-ball effort that included eight fours and five sixes. But he had greater joy in watching Jadhav play some out-of-the-world shots.
"I was glad I was out there with him. We spoke how to tackle that situation (63/4 chasing 351). The best way was to counterattack. We committed errors while bowling but we knew the pitch was better to bat in the second innings. We knew the ball travels very far, we could hit sixes to put pressure on the opposition," Kohli said.
Kohli admitted that the 200 runs he shared for the fifth wicket in 24.3 overs with Jadhav was "one of the best partnerships I have been part of. We have chased 350 twice before but not from 63/4".
"Some of the shots he played he told me were instinctive. I could not believe myself the way he played some of the shots" Kohli said, still praising Jadhav, who scored his runs off just 76 deliveries with 12 fours and four sixes.
Kohli, who has been part of many a successful chases, having pulled off wins from improbable situations, said he could "recall many moments when I felt I did not do this. I don't know how it got executed. If you are focused on the goal, the target you want to achieve, if you are looking at team, team, team all the time, you end up playing shots you don't believe you are capable of playing them. When you are in momentum, if you are under pressure, you won't be able to get it. It was just one of those things with all international batsmen," said the captain even as many were left gaping at the stupendous run chase.
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