Virat Kohli declared that calming himself was the bigger challenge during his century against Sri Lanka here on Tuesday.
“At times when you are in the zone, you tend to get carried away and play too many shots. When I went in, I assessed the conditions and thought about batting according to the situation.
“Instead of feeding off a four, three singles in a row does give extra satisfaction. This ground has been good for me and this is my third hundred here,” the Indian vice-captain said.
Kohli stressed that batting along with Gautam Gambhir has been a productive experience. “This is our third double century partnership and I hope we string many more. The thing about us is that I know his game, he knows mine and we know exactly what is happening out in the middle.”
Jayawardene rued the mistakes made by his team and said: “We gave too many runs in the last ten overs and on the field we gave about 15 runs through errors. We take pride in our fielding and these mistakes could have been avoided.
“While chasing, we were in control and we were hitting those mini-targets that we had set in the dressing room. And then I played a poor shot and in the batting Power Play, we lost two set batsmen.
“Also got to give credit to the way the Indians bowled, especially R. Ashwin.”
Veracity of catch
He also clarified that Sachin Tendulkar had his doubts about the veracity of the catch and hence stood his ground and awaited the third umpire's verdict. “Well Sachin was not sure about the catch, he wanted to know whether it was clean and since I was standing close, even I wasn't sure. That was the doubt and I said okay.”
