Former Indian captain Virat Kohli has talked about the expectations from ‘senior’ players ahead of the ODI World Cup 2023 while recalling the fond memories of the 2011 ODI World Cup at home. The talismanic batter also revealed the venue he’s ‘looking forward’ to playing the most among the 10 host cities as the schedule for the 2023 World Cup was revealed by ICC in an event hosted in Mumbai.
Kohli said that he was just 23 years old when he won the World Cup although he did admit that he had no idea what expectations people have from ‘senior’ players.
Now that the 34-year-old is among the senior players in the Indian team he is ‘excited’ about the prospect of playing a second ODI World Cup at home.
Speaking to ICC, in a promo shared by the governing body with just 100 days remaining for the show-piece event, Kohli revealed that he’s looking forward to playing at the Wankhede Stadium the most, as he wants to reminisce the atmosphere from the ODI World Cup 2011 final once again.
“Amazing, I’ve played one already but I was 23 at the time, I didn’t probably have an idea of the expectations on the senior players but now being a senior myself, I can understand what they went through and how special it is to play a home World Cup. How excited people are going to be, so it’s an experience that everyone wants to have in their career and I’m getting to do it twice to I’m really happy,” said Virat.
“Personally I’m looking forward to playing in Mumbai, fond memories of the finals in 2011 obviously, and it’d be great to experience that atmosphere again. I think cricket blends perfectly into the fabric of our culture that is precisely why you see so much passion when it comes to Indian cricket because people live the game at home,” added Kohli.
The legendary batter also talked about why fans in India love cricket so much, and how their support propels the Indian players to give it their all on the pitch.
“For us at the end of the day we’re going out to our job but it’s a lot more than that, when we grow up and start playing the game it’s purely down to the fact that there are so many people who love the game, look at the game. That amount energy invested into one thing obviously grows the importance of that particular thing tenfolds. Even we as cricketers value it so much because there’s so much competition we go throw from young age groups to make our way to the top so we’re absolutely committed to doing everything for the game,” Kohli stated further.
India will get their World Cup campaign underway against Australia on October 8 at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.
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