Dubai: India Captain Virat Kohli did not stop at giving credit for Pakistan to have outplayed India in their T20 WC opener, but pointed out at the dew factor which helped the Men in Green to chase down the 152 runs target comfortably.
"Towards the second half in Pakistan's innings, especially 10 overs onwards, the dew factor came into play. They were able to rotate strike. We did not get the dot balls. The pitch provided a bit more pace for the batsmen to work with. The slower balls were not holding up that much. So, these small factors, as I said, make a massive difference," he said at the post-match press conference here.
Because of the dew factor, Kohli said those 25 extra runs mattered a lot, but Pakistan bowled their hearts out and strongly restricted India.
Toss is going to definitely be a factor in the tournament, Kohli said, specially the dew creeping in at the later half of the game, he added.
On Shaheen Afridi's devastating spell, Kohli said the speedster bowled really well with the new ball and hit the right areas to pick wickets.
"Shaheen ran with intensity and his spell put India on the backfoot which proved getting that extra 25 runs that much difficult after he picked up three wickets for 31 runs first up," he said.
Asked if India was confident of winning the game because of the world cup record against Pakistan, Kohli said India does not take any opposition lightly and respects Pakistan, because they are one side who can beat any team in the world on a given day.
"On a day when we don't play well, we accept it and give credit to the opposition. We don't create any other scenario. Instead, we correct our mistakes," he added.
Asked if he expected Pakistan to win by 10 wickets, Kohli said they definitely outplayed India as they did not give any chance to India.
"We played our best and tried to put pressure on Pakistan, but they had answers for everything. There is no shame in accepting a better team winning on a given day," he said.
Kohli also said today's defeat is good for the team because they will be in a position to correct their wrongs at the very initial stages of the tournament.
"We still have a lot of matches in this tournament and if we stick to the processes we follow, we definitely feel that we can overcome these mistakes," he said.
On India taking a knee in support of Black Lives Matter, Kohli said, "It was communicated to us by the management and Pakistan agreed to pay their tribute towards the same cause. We accepted our side of things as well. So, yeah that's how it was decided," he said. (UNI)
