New Delhi: The great bonding between the Indian cricket team's star batsman Virat Kohli and former captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni is well known. Virat Kohli played his first international match under the captaincy of Dhoni, after which he has been continuously spewing runs with the bat. Virat Kohli made a heart-touching statement about Dhoni a few months after relinquishing the Test captaincy last year. Kohli had said that when he took the decision to step down from Test captaincy, he only got a message from MS Dhoni.
Now Team India's former fielding coach R Sridhar has made a shocking claim in his new book 'Coaching Beyond: My Days with the Indian Cricket Team'. Sridhar has said that Virat Kohli was desperate to captain in white ball cricket in the year 2016 and at that time the then coach Ravi Shastri had asked Kohli to wait. In a book co-authored with R Kaushik, Sridhar recounts the days when Kohli was the captain of the Test team but did not get the captaincy in limited-overs cricket.
R. Sridhar wrote in his book, 'As far as the coaching group was concerned, such an atmosphere was created in which you could look each player in the eye and tell the truth, however bitter it may be. There was a time in the year 2016 when Virat Kohli was anxious even for limited-overs captaincy.' He said some such things which made it seem that he is restless to captain. He further wrote that 'One evening Ravi Shastri called Kohli and said look, Virat, Dhoni has given you the captaincy of the Test team. You should respect him. He will also hand over the limited overs captaincy to you, but when the time is right. If you don't respect him now, tomorrow when you become the captain, the team won't respect you.'
R. Sridhar further said, 'Virat Kohli accepted that advice, and later within a year he became the limited-overs captain as well.' Describing Shastri as an excellent communicator, Sridhar said that he used to speak directly and did not hesitate. He also said that Ravi Shastri had to do the work of informing the player who was dropped from the team.
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