It seems like just yesterday when India faced heartbreak and crashed out of the 2019 World Cup after losing the semi-final against New Zealand. It has been almost six years since the loss, but the wounds are still there. Virat Kohli, who was the captain of Team India back then, has finally opened up on the narrow loss against the Kiwis, which saw his side crash out of the tournament despite dominating the group stage.
The Men in Blue had finished at the top of the table after the league stage, winning seven out of nine fixtures. However, India's campaign came to an end in the semi-final after Kohli and co were defeated by New Zealand by 18 runs.
The semi-final went to the reserve day after the eventual game day witnessed rain after New Zealand's innings. Trent Boult broke the back of India's innings on the reserve day. MS Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja tried their best but it was not to be.
"The 2019 loss was massive; that was the first time actually after the semifinals got over, and the next morning, we were going to leave Manchester. You know when you wake up, and you have no kind of understanding of what you want to do like you’re dazed," Kohli said on the RCB Podcast.
"It was like the feeling you get when you have a horrible hangover. It was like that. I had no idea what I wanted to do, whether I wanted to drink coffee, brush my teeth, or what is the next step. Like I was completely gone. I could not make sense of it," he added.
‘It rained and then…’
{{/usCountry}}"It was like the feeling you get when you have a horrible hangover. It was like that. I had no idea what I wanted to do, whether I wanted to drink coffee, brush my teeth, or what is the next step. Like I was completely gone. I could not make sense of it," he added.
‘It rained and then…’
{{/usCountry}}Kohli then recalled how rain hampered India's chance in the semi-final, draining all the momentum his bowlers created by restricting New Zealand to 239/8 at Old Trafford.
"Everything was fine. We had to play in the afternoon, and it rained, and then we had to come the next morning, early morning conditions, this, that and the others. I was like, what are the odds, but then again, how things unfolded again. So you have to kind of go back into that space of looking at things," said Kohli.
"You can't get lost in what happened to me and this is what I'm going through. Maybe it was meant to be that way. You just have to accept things the way, of course, accepting is very hard to process it is very hard, but you have to get to that point and you have to keep moving," he added.
This was Kohli's second heartbreak in ICC tournaments as a captain, after having previously lost the 2017 Champions Trophy final against Pakistan. Kohli then also saw India crashing out of the T20 World Cup group stage in 2021.
Under Kohli, India also lost the World Test Championship final against New Zealand in Southampton in 2021. Kohli left India's T20 captaincy after the World Cup in 2021 while he resigned as the Test skipper in January 2022 following the series loss against South Africa.