Series against New Zealand will be all about “quality” cricket, says Virat Kohli

 

After neutralizing the Aussie threat in the recently concluded ODI series, India is all set to take on New Zealand in the highly-anticipated T20 International series, starting from tomorrow. The Men in Blue would want to carry their golden run in the white-ball cricket in the upcoming series too and defeat the Black Caps in their own backyard.

The Indian team has landed in Auckland and is busy practicing for the first T20 game tomorrow. Taking some time off practice to talk to the reporters, Indian skipper Virat Kohli revealed that he is not looking to take revenge of the semi-final game in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup, where the Kiwis managed to knock the Indian team out of the tournament in a match that was affected by rain.

Kohli noted that you exactly cannot take revenge from the New Zealand players because they are so sweet and nice. Even if we would want to go into that mode, their amazing nature won’t let us.

When asked about taking revenge on the World Cup semi-final loss, Kohli said, “Not really. Even if you think about revenge, there guys are so nice that you cannot get into that zone. Honestly, we get along really well with these guys and it is all about being competitive on the field.”

The two captains all smiles as they pose with the trophy ahead of the 5-match T20I series #NZvIND pic.twitter.com/TRGAAZ8nl1

— BCCI (@BCCI) January 23, 2020

Talking further about the World Cup loss, Kohli stated that he was really happy when New Zealand qualified for the finals as they were one step ahead of Team India and explained that the upcoming series will be about two “quality” side playing some really amazing cricket.

“They are a quality side and we really have a lot of respect for them and vice-versa, I think they have a lot of respect for us too. We actually were really happy for them when they qualified for the final. So, it is not about revenge at all, it is all about two quality sides playing good cricket,” Kohli said at the pre-match press conference in Auckland.

Last year, India handed out a humiliating 4-1 series loss to the Kiwis in the ODI format while the Black Caps emerged victorious in the shortest format of the game.

 

The ODI and T20I squads for the series were announced just a couple of days before and there were a few surprises. Prithvi Shaw has been included in the ODI side while Sanju Samson replaces Shikhar Dhawan in the T20 squad. Dhawan has been ruled out of the series after suffering a shoulder injury during the third ODI against Australia.

India’s T20I squad: Virat Kohli (c), Rohit Sharma, Sanju Samson, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Rishabh Pant, Shivam Dube, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Washington Sundar, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Navdeep Saini, Ravindra Jadeja, and Shardul Thakur.

India’s ODI squad: Virat Kohli (c), Rohit Sharma, Prithvi Shaw, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Rishabh Pant (wk), Shivam Dube, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur, and Kedar Jadhav.