India vs AustraliaVirat Kohli says he needed to justify presence on field after masterly 186

By India Today Sports DeskVirat Kohli said he had nothing to prove to his critics but he felt the need to justify his presence on the field after scoring a classical 186 against Australia in the fourth and final Test of the 2023 Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Kohli was named man-of-the-match for his 28th Test hundred as the series finale ended in a draw in Ahmedabad on Monday.

Virat Kohli ended a 1024-day wait for a Test hundred and battled some super tactics from Australia to hit his 28th century in the format and 75th in international cricket overall. It was a flat pitch but batting was never easy as Steve Smith chose to often pack the leg-side and asked his bowlers to bowl to one side of the wicket.

“I am not in a space now where I will go out and prove someone wrong. I also need to justify why I am there on the field. When I was 60 not out, we decided to play positively. But we lost Shreyas (Iyer) thanks to injury. So, we decided to play time. They were good with the ball and placed some good fields. We got a bit of a lead and gave ourselves some sort of a chance,” Kohli told STAR Sports in the post-match presentation ceremony.

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Virat Kohli said he was not desperate and added he felt that he was batting well from the first Test in Nagpur. Before the final Test, Kohli’s highest in the series against Australia was a well-composed 44 in the second match in Delhi.

“To be honest, the expectations I have from myself as a player is more to important to me. I felt I was batting well from the first innings at Nagpur. We focussed on batting for long. I did that to an extent but not to the capability that I have done in the past…. I was a little disappointed for that. Relief from the point of view that I could play the way I wanted to play.” Kohli said.

Virat Kohli showed a lot of patience, cut down all risk factors and played out challenging phases without hitting boundaries. Once Kohli reached his hundred, he was more aggressive and crossed the 150-run mark with some panache. In fact, Kohli was on the verge of his first double hundred against Australia but he ran out of parnters and played the only risky shot in his entire innings to be dismissed for 186.

Virat Kohli had started to face some tough questions over his hundred drought. Last year, he snapped the long wait with a T20 hundred against Afghanistan and finished 2022 with a an ODI hundred against Bangladesh. At the start of 2023, Kohli hit two hundreds against Sri Lanka.

But it will be the 186 against Australia at an important juncture that Virat Kohli will be most satisfied with. The pitch was nowhere near as challenging as the surfaces in Nagpur, Delhi and Indore but run-scoring was tricky at times and Kohli rode over the tough times to reap the rewards of patience later.

Virat Kohli has had a horror run in Test cricket over the last three years. His last fifty in the format came against South Africa early last year and his Test record against Australia in India was poor. The last time Australia played a series here was a forgettable one for Virat Kohli the batter even though India won the series 2-1 to mark the start of a four-series winning streak against the Aussies.

Eventually, Virat Kohli finished as the second highest run-scorer in the 2023 Border Gavaskar Trophy with 297 runs while Usman Khawaja who scored 180 in the first innings, collected 333 runs from the series.