Gary Kirsten talked about a young Virat Kohli when he took the role of India's head coach. Kirsten, who was India's coach when they won World Cup 2011, said Kohli impressed him in the first time itself. 

When Virat made a debut in the ODI cricket, Kirsten was India's coach and he saw the talent in him. But the ex-India coach also added there was a long way to go for Kohli to utilize his full potential.

ALSO READ: Rajat Bhatia opens up about the ugly on-field spat between Kohli and Gambhir in IPL 2013

Revealing what he taught Virat in his early days, Gary said, "Our relationship was formulated around him as a young player coming in, and me trying to say to him that he has a long way to go and to build in some consistent behaviors into the way he played this game.

"When I met Virat first up, he had great abilities and talent and he was a young guy. But I kind of knew straight away that he wasn’t operating in the best version of himself. So we had a number of discussions,” Kirsten added on The RK show on Youtube.

The 52-year-old shared how Kohli corrected his mistake as per his advice after a soft dismissal and also went on to score a hundred in the next ODI.

“I’ll never forget one when we were playing an ODI series against Sri Lanka, and he was batting beautifully and he was on 30-odd not out. He then decided that he would try and hit the (bowler) over long-on’s head for six. And he got holed out.

"I just said to him, ‘If you’re going to take your cricket to the next level, you need to hit that ball down the ground for one. You know you can hit a lot of balls up the ground, but there’s a lot of risk attached to that.’ I think he took that on board, he got a hundred in the next one-day in Kolkata,” Kirsten recalled.

Kirsten has also coached Kohli-led Royal Challengers Bangalore for two years and he may have seen the difference between the young and experienced Virat.