Virender Sehwag says, “not sure whether Virat Kohli build a team”: Former Indian flamboyant cricketer Virender Sehwag has taken a dig at Virat Kohli’s captaincy tenure of team India asserting that the numbers may portray something else, but not sure whether Virat Kohli build a team as much as Sourav Ganguly did.
Sehwag rated Ganguly’s style of captaincy much higher than Virat Kohli’s or perhaps higher than anyone else’s as he backed young and new players through the thick and thins and instilled a sense of confidence in them.
“Sourav Ganguly built a new team, brought in new players and backed them through their highs and lows. I doubt if Kohli did that in his tenure,” Sehwag opined.
Sehwag mentioned that during Virat Kohli’s captaincy, for a couple of years, several players were shuffled immediately after almost every test match, no matter what the result is.
“In my opinion, the #1 captain is the one who builds a team and gives confidence to his players. He (Kohli) backed some players, some he did not,” he added.
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Virat Kohli’s captaincy success:
Virat Kohli led team India in 68 test matches and drew a 59 per cent success rate. Kohli managed to win 40 games while 11 ended in a draw along with 17 defeats. In ODIs, Virat spearheaded the men in blue in 95 games out of which 65 ended on a winning cause while India lost 27 and 3 resulted in tied/NR. In the 50 matches captained by Virat Kohli in the shortest format, 30 resulted in a win while 16 were lost and 4 were NR/tied.
During his test captaincy stint, India went on to seal the Border Gavaskar Trophy not once but twice in Australia. India also thrashed England in their own backyard. The Asian cricket giant also reached the finals of the inaugural ICC World Test Championship.
The major high for Virat Kohli’s captaincy career came when he took India to the pinnacle of the test rankings for five consecutive years.
However, the end to a fantastic captaincy career wasn’t sweet enough to digest at the earliest. Virat Kohli decided to relinquish his all format leadership, announcing his call to drop the T20I captaincy following the end of the ICC T20 World Cup 2021 in the UAE.
While Virat wanted to keep ODI and test captaincy with himself, the BCCI desired continuity and stability in the approach for the ODI and T20I sides. The Indian cricket board wanted a single leader for two similar-looking white-ball formats of the cricket and eventually decided to sack Virat Kohli from the ODI roles.
To drop further bombshells Virat Kohli (on 15 January 2022) announced his resignation from the test leadership as well after India’s painful defeat in the test tour of South Africa.
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