Kohli was quite open and honest about his age and the game itself, stating that this break would indeed be beneficial for him in a personal sense, apart from being helpful for the team, after two matches in a row for the Men in Blue this Champions Trophy. Kohli, who scored a record-extending 51st ODI century and 82nd overall across formats, felt that aging was catching up with him and that he was now grateful for the week’s break since he found it hard along with his body to put such effort:
“To be honest, at 36 it’s pretty darn good. I don’t know about the 23, 24’s, but for me it is very good. I just need to put my feet up for two days because it takes a lot out of me now to keep putting that kind of effort on the ground. Thankful really for that little off time that we have,” Kohli said while receiving the Man of the Match award for his unbeaten hundred.
After two consecutive victories in the ongoing Champions Trophy, India will have their next match against New Zealand on Sunday, March 2, with the Kiwis possibly being other semi-finals contenders from Group A, having beaten Pakistan in the tournament opener.
While the target was not that big, the Indian batsmen had to keep a good friction in their innings, especially since Abrar Ahmed was getting an awful lot of purchase from a slow surface in Dubai in the middle overs. Kohli stressed the importance of the 64-run powerplay to India, after which he, Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer were able to just bat as they wanted against the spinners in the middle phase of the innings.
“It feels nice to bat in that way today because it was a crucial game for us to see qualification into the semis and to contribute to a game like this where we kind of lost Rohit early, and then we needed to string along a partnership again, learned from the last game, and played the conditions on this one in terms of how to go about things.”