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Mumbai, May 21. <\/strong>High quality rivals competing in a round-robin format has made the upcoming World Cup the \u201cmost challenging\u201d for India skipper Virat Kohli, who says maintaining intensity from the first ball will be key to his side\u2019s fortunes in the showpiece event.<\/p>\n Kohli, who has competed in two World Cups before, said the team does not have much breathing space because they have four tough games upfront, though in a way it should help them. For the first time since the 1992 edition, all the teams will play each other once to decide the semifinalists. After opening their campaign against South Africa on June 5, India will take on Australia (June 9), New Zealand (June 13) and Pakistan (June 16).<\/p>\n \u201cPersonally, it will probably be the most challenging World Cup I have been part of because of the format and also the strength of all the teams. If you look at Afghanistan from 2015 to now, they are a completely different side,\u201d said Kohli at the pre-departure press conference.<\/p>\n Easy to upset<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cAny team can upset anyone. That is one thing we have in mind. Focus will be on to play the best cricket that we can. You have to play to the best of your potential in every game because it is not a group stage situation. Playing everyone once is great for all the teams in my view. It is going to be a different challenge and every team will have to adapt quickly to,\u201d added Kohli.<\/p>\n Talking about his side\u2019s first four games, Kohli said, \u201cThat sets the tone nicely for us. Everyone will have to be at their best and maintain intensity from the first match onwards. You don\u2019t have any room for complacency and that is why it is the World Cup and the most important tournament. We expect that kind of pressure from the first second we step on the field. We are not going to let ourselves think that \u2018first week onwards we will get into it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to arrive on the day match-ready with hundred percent match intensity and start building from there,\u201d he added. \u201cThis is the challenge. If you look at all the top clubs in football they maintain their intensity for three-four months whether in Premier League or La Liga. So why not? If we get on a roll and we maintain our consistency we should be able to do it for the length of the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n High-scoring games<\/strong><\/p>\n The recent series between Pakistan and England saw 340-plus scores being the norm but Kohli said things could change in the quadrennial tournament. \u201cAs I said, the pitches are going to be very good. It is summer and the conditions are going to be nice. We expect high-scoring games but a bilateral series can\u2019t be compared to a Word Cup, it is very different,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we might also see 260-270 kind of games and teams defending it because of the pressure factor. We expect all kinds of scenarios in the World Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n More than the conditions, his team will have to come out on top in high-pressure situations, said the skipper. \u201cIt is always good to go to any place in advance. You are right, it does (help) getting rid of the nerves you might have as a side going into the World Cup,\u201d the captain said. \u201cWhite-ball cricket in England, playing an ICC event, the conditions are not that difficult compared to Tests. Handling the most pressure is the most important thing in the World Cup and not necessarily the conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Bowlers ready<\/strong><\/p>\n Kohli said his highly-rated bowling line-up is ready for the challenge. \u201cAll the bowlers in the squad, even in the IPL, they were preparing themselves for 50-overs cricket. You saw all the guys bowling, no one looked tired after bowling four overs,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were very fresh. The ultimate goal at the back of their mind was always to be fit for the 50-overs format and not necessarily let the fitness come down and that was communicated to them before the IPL started.\u201d<\/p>\n Kohli himself learnt a lot as captain in the IPL, where his team lost the first six games. \u201cWe literally came to a point where we said to each other that \u2018this has not happened to anyone before\u2019. So I realised that after a certain stage things are not in your control, so you have to accept that and work things accordingly,\u201d concluded the captain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mumbai, May 21. High quality rivals competing in a round-robin format has made the upcoming World Cup the \u201cmost challenging\u201d for India skipper Virat Kohli, who says maintaining intensity from the first ball will be key to his side\u2019s fortunes in the showpiece event. Kohli, who has competed in two World Cups before, said the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Virat-Kohli.jpg?fit=660%2C405&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paS11m-8x","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}