'I am not in absolute agreement' - Virat Kohli calls for best-of-three WTC finals

The ICC World Test Championship (WTC) Final ebbed and flowed and New Zealand finally won the match beating India by eight wickets in Southampton on June 23. Fittingly Ross Taylor and skipper Kane Williamson were the two batters at the crease who buried the ghosts of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019. The former scored an unbeaten 47, while the latter scored 52 to help the Blackcaps win an ICC trophy after 21 long years.

While the marquee clash was marred by rain, it was a good battle between the two top teams. Indian skipper Virat Kohli spoke to the media in a post-match press conference after the bitter loss. The 32-year-old spoke about the need for a minimum of three-Test series in the future to decide the winners of the WTC Final.

The WTC Final will now be played in 2023 and Kohli like Ravi Shastri and Sachin Tendulkar feels one match is not enough to determine the winners. “I am not in absolute agreement of deciding the best Test side in the world over the course of one game,” Kohli said. “If it is a Test series, it has to be a test of character over three Tests – which team has the ability to come back in the series or totally blow away the other team.

Why three-match WTC Final? Virat Kohli answers

“It has to be a hard grind and something that definitely needs to be worked around in the future,” Kohli added. Kohli also felt that a three-match Test series will give both sides a good chance of making a comeback after losing the first game.

“At the end of three matches, where there’s effort, there’s ups and downs, there’s situations changing during the course of the series, a chance to rectify the things you have done in the first game, and then really see who is the better side over the course of a three-match series or something, will be a good measure of how things really are,” Kohli went on to say.

Earlier, Team India head coach Ravi Shastri also gave a statement of how the result of the match would not carry too much significance.