With India needing to chase the massive 321-run target inside 40 overs against Sri Lanka in order to stay alive in that 2012 tri-series in Australia, Virat Kohli recalled how he and middle-order stalwart Suresh Raina decided to break the chase into two T20 games at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart.
India got off to a brisk start, with openers Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag scoring 54 runs off 38 balls for the first wicket. But it was Kohli's magnificent innings, his first ODI hundred in Australia (133* off 89 balls), and Raina's quickfire cameo (40* off 24 balls) that helped India pull off an unlikely victory, given the team's form leading upto the encounter.
"When we were warming up, the chat was not all that optimistic I still remember because our chances were very bleak, we did not have a successful Australia tour and the motivation factor was very low. The bonus point was something which we weren't even thinking about," Kohli told off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin on his Instagram live show 'Reminisce with Ash'.
"It was strange and suddenly out of nowhere we got that boost, Sachin paaji and Viru bhai had a brilliant partnership at the front, Gauti (Gautam Gambhir) bhai and me had a good partnership."
"Then Raina came and changed the momentum of the game and then he and I discussed that we need to break it down into two T20 games and that was the first kind of revelation for chasing the big totals for me."
Despite India's victory, it is Sri Lanka that played Australia in the best-of-three finals series, going down 2-1 to the hosts.
For young Kohli, that tour, his first internationally in Australia, was a memorable one. He not only cemented his place in the Test side, scoring some really difficult runs in Perth and his maiden hundred in Adelaide in India's 4-0 drubbing, but also took his game to another level in the white-ball version in what were not-so-easy conditions for ODI batsmanship.
"I remember that whole season from that Test hundred in Adelaide to the ODI matches, that was the season where I realised many things about my game, you want to be that guy who wants to be feared. This led to the innings that you were talking about and yes it was quite special," he concluded.
(Inputs from ANI)
