Skipper Virat Kohli termed his team’s win over the West Indies in the first Test a “complete performance” and reserved special praise for Mohammed Shami, who marked his return to the five-day format after a long injury layoff with four first-innings wickets.
India stamped their authority as Ravichandran Ashwin returned impressive figures of 7/83 to bowl out the West Indies for 231 and notch up a record innings and 92-run win on Monday.
“Wow, I didn’t know that,” Kohli said when told that this was India’s biggest win outside Asia, before adding, “Just feels good to get a win on the board, always good to start well. Good prep time, for three weeks. Everyone was excited, we’d enough practice. It was a complete performance.”
Kohli emphasised on the need to score runs quickly to aim for a win.
“Scoring wasn’t easy, initially West Indies bowled well. A couple of their bowlers rushed us, 70-odd for 2 with five batsmen, had to take responsibility. Shikhar was playing really well and I wanted to be positive, if you want to win a Test you have to score quickly and get the bowlers a chance to bowl the opposition out twice.”
“Then Ashwin played a brilliant innings down the order, it was a team batting performance. If we’re playing five batsmen, we wanted to deepen the order. We had Saha at No. 7 and Ashwin was good enough to bat at No. 6. He was a pure batsman before he became an off-spinner.”
Regarding his seam bowlers, he said, “Ishant bowled well without luck. Shami and Umesh were outstanding. They way they bowled on a wicket like this, they rushed the batsmen. Someone like Shami, after surgery to come back and prove himself. He’s a perfect Test bowler, hits those perfect deliveries to get batsmen out.”
