Despite a heavy defeat on Monday morning at the Basin Reserve in Wellington where the No.1 ranked Test team were outsmarted on all frontiers, Indian skipper pointed out two positives from their loss in the opener. India lost by 10 wickets in the first game of the two-match series as they conceded a 1-0 lead to Kane Williamson's men.
Kohli felt Mayank Agarwal and Ajinkya Rahane were the only two batters from the Indian lineup to have provided the team with some momentum. Mayank scored 34 and 58 while Rahane managed 46 and 39 in Wellington. Both played with discipline against Tim Southee and Trent Boult with the new ball and cautiously negated the bounce extracted off the pitch by debutant Kyle Jamieson.
"Mayank applied himself well, and he's the only other person apart from Rahane who got us any momentum with the bat. Our strength is to put big scores for our bowlers to bowl at, and that was missing in this match," said Kohli in the post-match presentation.
Kohli also said that the team won't be hard on players like Prithvi Shaw who has an experience of just two overseas Test innings. "He will figure a way, he will find a way to score runs," the skipper added.
It is India's first defeat in the ongoing World Test Championship and also their first in the format since December 14, 2018 where they had lost to Australia in Perth.
"Toss turned out to be very important. As a batting unit we take pride in being competitive, but we weren't. Even scoring 220-230 would've been good. That first innings put us behind and then the lead put us under more pressure. The bowlers toiled well, as a bowling group we've taken pride in being competitive," said Kohli.
