As Team India Leaves For England, Captain Kohli Feels This World Cup Will Be Most Challenging

If you'd think that all those defeats while leading the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the just-concluded IPL would have left him a little bit jaded, you probably don't know Virat Kohli.

Looking fresh and pumped up at the BCCI HQ for the pre-departure presser for the World Cup here on Tuesday, the India captain, with coach Ravi Shastri flanking him, seemed ready to play the questions thrown at him with a straight bat.

While six straight defeats in the first half of the IPL must've mentally drained him, they also seem to have added some wisdom in the 30-year-old.

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"The most important thing I learnt is that even if it is a must-win game, you can't think in your room the day before what might happen or what might not happen. You have to just arrive that day and do your skill to the best of your ability. You have to accept things the way they are, that is the biggest learning," he said philosophically.

It's not often that you hear him term something as "most challenging," but Kohli seemed fully aware of the hurdles that stare India on the road to the World Cup trophy in England this summer. From June 5, when they take on South Africa at Southampton, India will play nine games (in the league stage) on the trot against the world's top 10 teams.

In the past, the option of a quarterfinal could help a team overcome an average show in the league stage. At the last World Cup in 2015, there was an argument about how India's first real big test came as late as in the semis against Australia (which they lost), while they never played England or hosts New Zealand.

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"Personally, I feel, it is probably the most challenging World Cup of all the three that I have been a part of because of the format. (You can say that) looking at the strengths of all the sides as well. If you look at an Afghanistan from 2015 to now, they are a completely different side. Any team can upset anyone on their day. That's the one thing we have in mind," said Kohli.

India's first four games-they play the Aussies on June 9 at The Oval in London, the Kiwis on June 13 at Nottingham, and then Pakistan on June 16 at Old Trafford-are all against tough opposition, but the world's best batsman is clearly up for that kind of a challenge.

"The best thing is we have four tough games straight up. It sets up things nicely. Everyone has to be at their best, gain intensity from the first match itself. You don't have any room for complacency. That's why it is the World Cup - the most important tournament in the world. We expect that kind of pressure from the first second," he said, before asking his team to take a leaf out of some of the top football clubs of the planet.

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"If you look at the top class football clubs in the world, in the Premier League or in the La Liga, they maintain their intensity for three to four months. If we get on a roll and we maintain our consistency we should be able to do it for a length of the tournament," he felt.

For that, the skipper is aware that his team has to be on its toes. "The focus will be to play the best cricket we can play and if we live up to our skills and our standards that we have set for ourselves, we will probably be on the right side of the results more often.

That's going to be the key. You have to play every game to the best of your potential because it's not a group stage any more, it's just playing everyone. I think it's a great thing to have for any team. It's going to be a different challenge and something that every team will have to adapt to very quickly," summed up Kohli.

Seeing the way the batsmen made merry in England during the hosts' ODI series against Pakistan recently, one expects high-scoring games in the World Cup. Kohli, however, still believes that bowlers will have a chance.

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"In the ICC tournaments, the pitches are going to be very good and it is summer in the UK, so the conditions are going to be nice as well. Yeah, we expect high scoring games but a bilateral series compared to a World Cup, is very different. You might see a lot of - I wouldn't say low-scoring games but - 260-270 kind of matches and teams getting those totals and defending them successfully because of the pressure factor," he said.

India should be a tad worried about the poor form of Chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav, who goes into his maiden World Cup after having been dropped by the Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL, but Kohli's words must soothe the nerves of the young tweaker.

"In hindsight if you look at it, someone like Kuldeep, who has had so much success, it is important to see a period when things don't go your way also and we are glad that it happened during the IPL rather than during the World Cup," Kohli said, before placing faith in the bowler to bounce back.

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"So, he has time to reflect, time to correct things and come into the World Cup even stronger. We know the kind of skill set he possesses along with (Yuzvendra) Chahal. They are really the two pillars of our bowling line-up," praised the captain.

Similarly, the 30-year-old isn't too fazed by the ordinary firm that Kedar Jadhav showed for CSK before he was injured. "We understand the kind of pitches they (CSK) got while playing at home. We were not too worried about looking at Kedar."