- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
FORMER Australia captain Ricky Ponting has said that he is really surprised to see Virat Kohli giving up India Test captaincy.
The ace India batter stepped down from the helm in the long format earlier this month after India lost an away series against South Africa 1-2 despite taking an early lead.
Kohli also stepped down from the national T20 captaincy and that of the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League and was removed as the captain in the 50-over format as the Indian selectors sought a single captain for the white-ball variants.
ALSO READ: Kohli quits Test captaincy: ‘Everything has to come to a halt’
“Yes, it did actually (surprise me). Probably the main reason why I had a chat and good catch-up with Virat during the first part of the IPL (2021) before it got postponed. He was talking then about stepping away (from captaincy) from white-ball cricket and how passionate he was to continue on to be Test match captain.
India squander series as South Africa win Cape Town Test
“He just loved and cherished that job and that post so much. Obviously, the Indian Test team had achieved a lot under his leadership. When I heard it, I was really, really surprised,” the official website of ICC quoted Ponting as saying.
“You only have to watch him on the field for an hour of the day’s play to realize how passionate he is about that job and the role, and how much he wants the team to win and how much he wants the best for Indian cricket.
“I was shocked, but then I started thinking about other things, even my own time as captain. I have gone on record and said that I probably think I played a couple of years longer than I should have in hindsight. I think I might have been captain for a couple of years longer than I should have,” Ponting, one of the game’s most successful captains, added.
Kohli led India in 68 Tests since 2014 and led them to victory 40 times, the most than any other skipper in the country’s long cricketing history. He lost 17 games while 11 were drawn.
Abroad, Kohli has an impressive captaincy record of winning 16 out of 36 matches (percentage of 44.44), the highest for an Indian or Asian skipper who has led their side in at least 10 games.
“So I think there is potentially a shelf-life for international cricket captains and even coaches. Virat’s been there for close to seven years now. If there’s a country in the world that’s the most difficult to captain, it’s probably India because of just how popular the game is and how much every single Indian loves to see the fortunes of the Indian cricket team, whether they are good or bad. You weigh all those things up,” Ponting, who led Australia to 48 wins in 77 Tests, said.
“It was more of a staggering achievement for India than it was for us,” he said.
“When I took over, I took over a side that had dominated world cricket for a long time. If you think about India before Virat, it was about winning a lot of games at home and not winning quite as many overseas. The thing that improved the most was India winning a few more games overseas, and that’s something that he and all of the Indian cricket have to be really proud of,” he added.
“The other thing is there really was a real focus placed on Test cricket by the BCCI when Virat took over, and I think a lot of it has come from him as well – to focus more on Test cricket and winning more games home and away. Given his Test record as captain, he can walk away from the role very, very proud of what he has achieved,” the former Australia captain, who also led his team to two World Cup titles, said.
Globally, Kohli stands as the third most successful captain in Tests after Graeme Smith (53 wins out of 109 matches) and Ponting.
In terms of batting, Kohli has scored 23,474 international runs with 70 centuries, one less than Ponting who has made 27,483 runs. The list is topped by Sachin Tendulkar who has made 34,357 runs with 100 international tons.
