‘I want to see India dominate for at least five years’- Kohli

Indian rising star and captain of the test team Virat Kohli feels that the team has the potential to dominate and demolish the sides around the world and be at the top for coming 5 to 6 years.

“I strongly want to see the Indian team dominate for at least five or six years,” Kohli told the Cricket Monthly. “We certainly have the talent. We certainly have the ability. All that it will take is how you manage that and keep them together.”

“I want to create strong bonds. I want to create strong friendships in this unit. We live 250-280 days a year together so I want to create such an atmosphere where in the next ten years watching it from outside you would get to know this team is a united team. This team is a strongly knit unit. They want to play for each other. They don’t want to play for themselves. That is my vision.”

Kohli who took over the test captaincy from MS Dhoni last year after his surprise retirement from the longest format, believes in aggressive cricket.

“We like playing the same brand of cricket,” Kohli said of the team he takes charge of, starting with the tour to Bangladesh later this month. “The thing that I want to do and I can do in Test matches is free them from any kind of doubt. Free them from any kind of insecurity… On the field if you see them [Australia] play you feel like, ‘damn, that’s a unit, we really have to play our bloody best to beat these guys’. I want that to happen to Indian cricket. In Test matches we want to be the team to beat. It is just the mindset, sometimes we tend to go into that zone where the thinking is not right.”

The interview also included questions about Anushka Sharma and their relationship and that they have made regular headlines for probably the “WRONG” reasons to which Kohli replied “It might not necessarily be only in our case, where she [Anushka] was accused of everything,” Kohli said. “It was just sad to see that happening, the way people reacted. It is in every walk of life. It is how a certain set of people think in our country and are ready and willing to blame the woman for everything that goes wrong.”

Kohli revealed, both of them love to talk about cricket – “If she likes a particular moment in the game she will ask what I was thinking at that point, because for us it looked like this, but for you what it was like?” – But enjoyed not talking about it even more. “We do talk a little bit, but the best part is she does not force me to talk about cricket… which is amazing.”