Riding on Kohli's ninth ODI century, India thrashed Sri Lanka by seven wickets to keep their hopes alive of reaching the final. Chasing 321 for victory, India reached the target in the 37th over to win with a bonus point and leapfrogged Sri Lanka into second spot in the table behind Australia.

"It has to be the best innings of my career. The kind of situation we were in, chasing 321 and also we needed the bonus point, so it was a crunch game and to play an innings like that at the right time, I felt it was a great innings for me," Kohli said at the post-match press conference.

Kohli felt this victory would boost confidence of the team after the disastrous tour of Australia, where India were annihilated 0-4 in the Test series and are hanging by a thread to qualify for the final of the tri-series. "It is important to win like that after the sort of tour we had so far in Australia. We will take a lot of positives from this match when we will look back, it was like telling each of us that we can take a bit from this win. It shows this team can play like this at any point of time," Kohli said.

"When you have one game to play, you need to give everything and we were able to do that and we can be satisfied," he said. India are tied on 15 points with Sri Lanka but will qualify for the final if Sri Lanka lose to Australia in the final group match. "If we reach the final, we will be as expressive as today, we will not be hesitant and we will play like we did today," said Kohli.