Kohli became India's all-format captain in 2017 when MS Dhoni stepped down.
MS Dhoni was winding down his captaincy tenures as he had retired from Test cricket in 2014-15 and Kohli became the captain in the red-ball format during the Australia tour. However, Dhoni retained captaincy in white-ball cricket.
MS Dhoni captained India in the T20 World Cup 2016 and multiple bilateral series after that and stepped down as captain of India in the limited-over formats in January 2017, just ahead of the ODI series at home against England.
Virat Kohli took over as India's captain in 2017 from England series onwards.
Now a Twitter user shared an excerpt from former India fielding coach R Sridhar’s book ‘Coaching Beyond- My days with the Indian cricket team’, highlighting how Virat Kohli was very eager to become the white-ball captain as well after getting the command of the Test team.
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In his book, R Sridhar writes as per the excerpt shared: “There was a time in 2016 when Virat was very eager to be the captain of the white-ball team too. He said a few things that showed he was looking for the captaincy.”
The excerpt further says that it was Ravi Shastri who took Virat aside and made him understand that he should wait for the captaincy to come to him rather than making any moves if he wanted the respect of his team as Dhoni was in process of making the transition.
The excerpt reads: “One evening, Ravi called him and said, 'Look, Virat, MS gave it [the captaincy] to you in red-ball cricket. You have to respect him. He will give it to you in limited-overs cricket, too, when the time is right. Unless you respect him now, tomorrow when you are the captain, you won't get the respect from your team. Respect him now, irrespective of what is going on. It will come to you, you don't have to run behind it.'
To his credit, Virat took the advice on board. Eventually, in a year’s time, he got the white-ball captaincy too.”
Virat Kohli took over as full-time captain in all formats in January 2017 and led India till 2022 when he stepped down from T20I captaincy post the 2021 T20 World Cup and Test captaincy after the 2022 tour of South Africa.
He wanted to remain the ODI captain, but the BCCI replaced him with Rohit Sharma as captain in all formats.