Former India wicketkeeper MS Dhoni has left a massive impact on the game with his leadership. He is the only skipper in the history of cricket to have won all three ICC white-ball trophies – 2007 World T20, 2011 Cricket World Cup and 2013 Champions Trophy.
Under Dhoni’s captaincy, the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, R Ashwin among others realized their potential at the highest level and went on to establish themselves as the superstars of Indian cricket.
Recently, batting legend Sunil Gavaskar highlighted the significant role played by Dhoni in shaping Kohli’s career.
"When Virat Kohli started his career it was a stop-start career. The fact that MS Dhoni gave him that little extra momentum is why he is the Kohli we see today," Gavaskar said on Star Sports.
Virat Kohli’s achievement as a cricketer is surreal, to say the least. He has taken Indian cricket to great heights with his batting and captaincy over the years.
Kohli has represented India in 113 Tests, 292 ODIs and 117 T20Is so far, amassing more than 26000 international runs with 80 centuries. He led India in 213 matches across formats and won 135 of them. His success rate as Indian captain is one of the best in the history of cricket.
Kohli is currently playing in the IPL 2024, where he is leading the chart of top run-scorers with 661 runs in 13 innings at a strike rate of 155.16.
However, the RCB opener’s strike-rate has been a topic of debate this season, with many criticizing him for being slow after the powerplay overs.
Recently, Virat responded to the criticism, saying: “All the people who talk about strike rates and me not playing spin well are the ones talking about this stuff (his low strike-rate). For me, it’s about winning the games for the team and there’s a reason why you’ve done it for 15 years, you’ve done this day in and day out, you’ve won games for your teams, I’m not quite sure that if you haven’t been in that situation yourself, to sit and talk about the game from the box.”
His comments didn’t go down well with Gavaskar, who pointed out that questions were being raised because Kohli was going at a strike-rate of 118 and then getting out in the 14th or 15th over.
"Commentators questioned only when the strike rate was 118. I'm not too sure. I don't watch too many matches, so I don't know what the other commentators have said otherwise. But if you have a strike of 118 and then you get out in the 14th or the 15th with a strike-rate of 118, I mean, if you want applause for that, that's a little bit different. That's different," Gavaskar had said.
Gavaskar also asked Kohli why he was responding to outside noise if he claims to pay no attention to it.
"When you talk about all these guys talk about, oh we don't care about outside noise, acha. Then why are you replying to any outside noise or whatever it is. We all played a bit of cricket, not a lot of cricket. We don't have agendas. We speak about what we see. We don't necessarily have any likes and dislikes. Even if we have likes and dislikes, we actually speak on what is happening," he added.
