Shastri also opened up about his equation with Virat Kohli.
Former India team head coach Ravi Shastri has compared Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma’s captaincy styles to that of Indian legends Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar. He also opened up about his equation with Kohli and how they worked in sync for the Indian cricket team.
Shastri observed both Kohli and Rohit closely, having coached India for nearly 5 years and witnessed the Test skipper’s leadership, as well as Rohit’s captaincy when the regular captain was rested or injured.
Well, Shastri played for India under the captaincy of both Kapil Dev and Gavaskar, and he found Kohli to be similar to the legendary all-rounder, while compared Rohit’s style with the legendary batter.
Shastri said on Star Sports: “You look at the two (Kohli and Rohit) and compare their captaincy, it reminds me of Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar. Virat more like Kapil, while Rohit is more like Gavaskar.”
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The Kohli-Shastri partnership enjoyed great success across the formats, both at home and away, but they failed to guide India to an ICC trophy triumph, and the former coach said that his and Kohli’s personalities are quite the same and they worked in sync because of their aggressive personalities.
Shastri further said, “The personality sync helped. We were both pretty aggressive and both played to win. We realized very quickly that to win you need to take 20 wickets, so you go to start picking and identifying players who will help you do that. It might take time.”
He concluded, “And by deciding to play aggressive and fearless cricket, it meant at times you would lose games but once you got one across the line, its infectious and I realized that early.”