India vs England, 4th Test: Virat Kohli makes BIG statement after historic win at Oval

India defeated England by 157 runs at The Oval on Monday (September 6) to grab a 2-1 series lead with one match to go in the 5-match Test series. 

After the historic win, India captain Virat Kohli spoke to Michael Atherton, and said, "The best thing about the both wins is the character that the side has shown. If you look at how the game panned: you mentioned the 100-run lead that England had in the first innings [England had a 99-run lead at The Oval] - to come back from there and the way we batted in the second innings showed that we are not down and out. And we are not looking to surivive in this game. If there's an opportunity to put the opposition under pressure, we'll go for it. And we put up a total on the board which was always going to be difficult to chase, especially heading latter half of Day 4 and 5. As I said at Lord's as well, I'm really proud of the character the team has shown, specially this morning the way the team has bowled. It is definitely among top three bowling performances that I have witnessed as Indian captain."

Kohli added that he was confident that Indian bowlers will pick up 10 wickets on a seemingly flat pitch in the fourth innings. "It's quite relative what you call flat. The last two days, conditions were really hot so the field wasn't that wet like the first three days. And we knew we were in with an opportunity with [Ravindra] Jadeja bowling from one end into the rough - the ball got scuffed up quite nicely and we managed to make one side heavier. And our guys, when the ball is reversing enough, they become much more lethal, and we exploited reverse swing perfectly today. We were actually looking forward to bowling with the old ball. And we looked at that as a positive rather than thinking: 'Nothing's happening from the pitch, what are we going to do here?' Rather than that, we believed as a team, yes, we could get all 10 wickets today.That's exactly why it happened today, because the boys had belief."

Kohli praised Jasprit Bumrah for his six-over spell post lunch and said, "Absolutely unbelievable spell. If you give 27 runs off 22 overs on this kind of pitch, that's a huge effort in the last innings of the Test match. As you said the pitch hadn't offered enough, but as soon as the ball started reversing a bit, Jasprit just said: "Just give me the ball." And he bowled that six-over spell and got us two breakthroughs which completely shifted the momentum to our side. From there on, we knew anymore mistakes from England and we will be all over this game."