Skipper Kohli calls for improvement in fielding

Indian Skipper Virat Kohli has criticised the team's fielding against Pakistan in their Group B match of the Champions Trophy cricket tournament here.

Kohli gave his team only six out of ten points for the fielding display on Sunday, where there were some misfields, dropped catches and missed runouts. But despite this, defending champions India put up an all-round show to drub arch-rivals Pakistan by 124 runs via Duckworth-Lewis (DL) method in a rain-marred match.

Pakistan's highest scorer Azhar Ali was reprieved twice, once by all-rounder Hardik Pandya who missed a runout opportunity and once by medium pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who dropped his catch at long-on.

Kedar Jadhav also dropped the catch of Shadab Khan. Besides these errors, there were various misfields which could have proved decisive in a close match.

"With the bat and ball, right up there -- I would say nine out of 10. In the field, we were still 6 today. Very strong performance, we've taken the confidence from the practice games. We need to tighten our fielding to compete hard against the best teams," Kohli was quoted as saying by cricinfo on Sunday.

Kohli also praised veteran batsman Yuvraj Singh, who made 53 runs off 30 balls and termed his innings as the "difference" between the two sides.

"The way he batted, the way only he can strike the ball, hitting low full tosses for 4s and 6s, and even digging out yorkers for fours, was outstanding. I think that really deflated the opposition and that gave me a bit of time to settle in from the other end," Kohli said.

"When he got out, I took over. But I think his innings was a difference in the game. If he plays like that, you know, the team is always in a good space because you can really rely on him to come in and just play a match (changing) innings, more often than not," Kohli said.

"And he ended up doing it three out of five times," he added.

--IANS

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