Former captain and batting legend Sourav Ganguly has gone on record to say that Virat Kohli is better than Sachin ‘God’ Tendulkar when it came to chasing. Ganguly told India Today: "Kohli is the greatest chaser by far and I am saying this keeping in mind the great man Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin was special but as far as chasing is concerned, Kohli has done better than Sachin. Kohli is unreal."
Dada also added that India would be unstoppable after ‘getting out of jail’ and that he was never in doubt about an Indian victory and that he was sure that India would win as long as Kohli and Dhoni were at the crease. He said: “Two outstanding players were at the wicket. It was still a good pitch to bat on. I always thought India would win as long as these two boys (Kohli and Dhoni) were at the crease.” Australia had to get one of these two boys out, preferably Kohli. When they were not able to get Kohli out, I knew India would win.”
He added that Kohli was getting better with every game. He said: “"He knew that he could accelerate at any stage and take the game away. I get the feeling that the team management feels he is India's go-to man. They don't put any pressure on him even if he scores slowly.”
Australia captain Steve Smith, while tipping his hat to a brilliant innings from India's Virat Kohli, was left ruing his team's middle overs malaise after their sixth attempt to win the World Twenty20 came up short in Mohali. Kohli's magnificent 82 not out from 51 balls helped India overhaul Australia's 160 with five balls to spare on Sunday, sending the hosts into the semi-finals as Group 2 runners-up and Smith's men home. Smith was quick to pay tribute to Kohli's "seriously unbelievable" knock but said Australia had contributed to their failure to sustain a challenge for the one major international trophy they have never won.
Dismissing criticism of Australia's preparations and the make-up of the squad, Smith said it had been in the execution of their skills that the players had fallen short. "You have to try and find your best 15, particularly in these conditions, and I think we had the right 15, we just let ourselves down in key moments," he told reporters in his post-match news conference. "Obviously we haven't done as well as we'd have liked in this format but hopefully we'll continue to improve."
Virat Kohli
The "conditions", slow pitches which favour spin bowling, were a recurring theme throughout Smith's postmortem of the campaign but it was the batting in the middle overs that he pinpointed.
"We probably let ourselves down in the middle overs again ... losing a few wickets in clumps, not being able to get that partnerships together to get the score above par to 170-odd, so that was a bit disappointing," Smith added.
"But I think the players will learn a lot from this tournament, playing in these conditions again, it's very valuable and hopefully we can continue to learn and get better."
Smith paid tribute to all-rounder Shane Watson, who took 2-23 and a stunning diving catch to dismiss Yuvraj Singh in his last match as an international cricketer before retirement.
"Obviously there's no real fairytales in sport very often," Smith said of his 34-year-old team mate.
"Shane gave his all as he did every game for Australia, I thought he bowled beautifully tonight and looked like he was 25 again taking that catch."
Smith was in mood to complain about his own dismissal despite television pictures indicating he had been unfortunate to be given out for two.
He said the foundations for Australia's demise had been laid in their opener against New Zealand.
"I think we let ourselves down against New Zealand, we probably should have won that game," Smith said.
"To lose that game by eight (runs) was quite shattering. And we were always chasing our tail from there.
"We had to win every game we played and in Twenty20 cricket that's quite hard. It's quite a fickle game and all it takes is one player going off, like tonight, to take the game away."
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