Virat Kohli captained the Indian team with enormous success. He led the country in 213 matches across formats and won 135 of them, including Test series wins in Australia, Sri Lanka and West Indies and a number of white-ball series away from home.
However, India failed to win an ICC tournament under his captaincy even though they came close on numerous occasions. With Kohli at the helm, the Men in Blue lost the Champions Trophy final in 2017, ODI World Cup semi-final in 2019 and the inaugural World Test Championship final in 2021.
After the T20 World Cup 2021, Virat stepped down as India’s T20I skipper but the selectors also sacked him from ODI captaincy citing that they don’t want different individuals leading the white-ball teams. By January 2022, Kohli gave up the Test captaincy as well following the series loss in South Africa.
In an episode of PUMA’s Let There Be Sport documentary series, Virat Kohli said he never had any selfish motive while holding the leadership position of the national team. He also admitted that he made many mistakes during his stint.
“Hundred percent. So I have no shame in accepting that I have made many mistakes when I was the captain. But the one thing I know, for sure that I never did anything for my own selfish motives that I can take guarantee of that from the one to the last day. I have not done anything for myself. I just had one goal to take the team ahead. I can totally accept if I have taken the decisions correctly or not. I can totally accept it you make mistakes like you make errors when you get out, that’s a failure. Failures will keep happening but the intent was never in the wrong please. So I can absolutely take guarantee of that. Till that is in its right place, you will make mistakes, but you will learn from that as I said, you will not then start shining away from making things," Kohli stated.
“My intentions were always right. The ways I said you had to tweak according to individuals. Many times decisions have been wrong, but these things teach you a lot. Then you start taking it as the whole journey and what went well, but then go right and then you learn from all situations so that’s exactly what happened," he added.
Virat Kohli is currently plying his trade in the IPL 2023 season for RCB. In 11 innings so far, he has amassed 420 runs at a strike rate of 133.75 with six half-centuries.
