India’s win over South Africa on latter’s home-soil was truly special both for Men-in-Blue and skipper Virat Kohli. India won the six-match One Day International (ODI) series against South Africa 5-1. And with this they became the first squad from India to do so.

In the limited over series, captain Kohli was in a splendid form as he scored 558 runs with an average of 93. Virat Kohli also becomes the man of the series. In the limited over series against the rainbow nation, Virat scored three centuries and two half-centuries. The accolades, however, came after he was criticised for the debacle in the Test sesries.

Talking to the media at the post-match conference, Virat Kohli said, “Look I will be very honest with you, at this stage, I don’t feel like competing with anyone. It is all about how I prepare for the game and what my work ethics are and how I am feeling on game day and my only motivation is to get into that frame of mind. I am not competing with anyone at all. If anything, I only look to help my team in any way I can. And during the course of that, I have mentioned that if you are thinking about the team, special things happen.”

“Look as I said, I’m not going to give in to this. I know for a fact that 90 percent of the people didn’t give us a chance after two Tests. I was sitting in the same room giving a press conference. So, we understand where we’ve come from. I’m not going to live in a dreamland right now and accept all the praise and sit here and feel good about this because it doesn’t matter to me. Honestly, it doesn’t,” Virat Kohli said.

On Friday, Virat Kohli smashed his ‘record’ 35th ODI ton and led India to an 8-wicket win, further added that he does not want any headlines. “As I said I don’t want any tags, I don’t want any headlines, I just go out there and do my job, it is up to the people to write what they write, I don’t want to be called anything, it’s my job, I am supposed to do what I am doing and I am not doing anyone a favour as I said, so just want to be in this zone of working as hard as I can and trying to do the best for the team. Everyone is doing a job, they have the freedom to write and say what they want but it’s very important that I don’t change with that because my zone is very simple, it is simply doing hard work and performing for the team.”

On the Test series debacle, he said: “I obviously didn’t have much time to prepare because I was doing something very important, I was getting married. So three weeks I was totally away from the game, but at the back of my mind, there was always this motivation that I just want to be in South Africa. It’s embracing being in a difficult situation and that’s all we speak about in the change room as well.”

“When things are hostile and when thing are not going your way, you want to go out there in the middle rather than getting extra sleep in the room. It is a very small change of thought but that makes a massive difference because when you go out there, you either want to take up the challenge or you don’t and that can only come from here,” he said.

After the ODI series win, India will face South Africa in the three-match T20I series.