India won by an innings and 36 runs
Kohli: "It's a very special feeling to win the series. I was just having a chat with Ashwin in that victory lap, this is the ground where we lost the moment to England four years ago and lost the series mentally. But, the way the crowd came out and supported us gave us a lot of energy to push through the tough moments. Conceding 400 was a tough challenge but to get a lead of 231 just deflated the opposition. We saw their body language on the field. This game was all wrapped up as soon as we got that 231-run lead. We know that this wicket offers bounce as well, so the adjustment was very important. Credit to all the batsmen for doing that, especially Vijay. I could see the frustration in his mind of not getting the runs. To come out and clear that and to play a champion knock for his team speaks volumes of his character. And Jayant's knock was very special. Maiden hundred comes at the home of cricket in India in front of a big crowd. I think it couldn't have gotten any better for him. I was pretty focussed on this game. I knew we were 2-0 up and we had the chance to make it 3-0 and go to Chennai and really express ourselves freely. I was a bit nervous with 400 on the board, but I knew I have to score many for us to have a chance. I kept the targets realistic. The first thing was to level the scores and as we got that I thought why not get a 50-run lead and then we got the momentum. It's all about the body language and the belief you have in your mind and I am very grateful that it came at the right time. This (series win) is probably the sweetest win of all that we won in the last 14-15 months. It was a test of patience on this wicket. I felt the advantage we had was England were a spinner short and their two spinners were very tired.
They bowled 50-plus overs and we knew bad balls would come our way. If you don't bowl your fast bowlers on a regular basis on pitches like these, they will lose confidence as well. So when they come in they are thinking of stopping runs rather than thinking of wickets and we sensed that and we went after them hard. I think it was a brilliant cricket wicket. Ashwin obviously a champion bowler, we are running out of words to describe him. He's always right up there to win the Man of the Match every Test we play and he's won so many Man of the Series awards as well. So you can understand the impact that he's had on this team going to No. 1 and to see where we stand today, I think 50-60 percent of that has been Ashwin's effort to be honest. The batsmen have only played second fiddle to his performances, he's contributed with the bat as well. I am just delighted to have a guy like him in the team. Any team would love to have Ashwin in their squad right now, such an intelligent cricketer, knows his fields, knows his bowling, knows his batting and the opposition knows that. So it's very difficult to get past him and a real boost for team India. We spoke about their batsmen hardly able to defend six balls in a row. Defence is a very important aspect in India, if you don't defend well it's tough to counter the bowling that we have. We sensed that they don't have enough faith in the way they went about their business. Even in the second innings we knew that they played a lot of high risk shots and it was just a matter of couple of wickets and it's going to crumble pretty quickly. That's the one difference between the two sides I feel. We enjoy defending balls rather than thinking of it as I want to score runs now."
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