Earlier this month, when Virat Kohli announced his decision to step down as India’s Test captain, he made shock saves across the cricket fraternity. The 33-year-old has been replaced as limited captain by Rohit Sharma, ending his Test leadership as India’s best.
While Kohli enjoys an excellent captaincy record in all formats, the lack of ICC trophies in the cabinet remains a major point of criticism. Under Kohli, India lost the 2017 Champions League final, the 2019 World Cup semi-final, the inaugural World Test Championship final and were eliminated from the group stage of the 2021 T20 World Cup. Former India head coach Ravi Shastri, who held the role for most of Kohli’s captaincy, is now defending India’s star batsman in that regard.
“A lot of big-name players haven’t won the World Cup. That’s okay. (Sourav) Ganguly, (Rahul) Dravid, (Anil) Kumble haven’t won either. So can we label them bad players?”
“You can’t generalize. You go play. How many World Cup winning captains we have. Sachin Tendulka has to play six World Cups to win it,” he noted.
“At the end of the day, you’re judged by your performance, are you an ambassador for the game? Are you playing the game with integrity and for a long time? That’s how you end up evaluating players.”
Shastri also said he had not watched the “single-goal” of the recently concluded series between India and South Africa, but insisted that a loss meant the team could collapse.
“If you lose a series, you start criticizing … you can’t win every game, there will be winners and losers,” Shastri said.
“How can the standard suddenly drop? For five years, you’ve been No. 1 in the world, and like I said, I haven’t paid attention to a single ball in the series. But I don’t think there’s going to be much Virat Kohli change.”
Complete News Source : Hindustan Times
