India’s former head coach Ravi Shastri believes Virat Kohli’s successful stint as Indian captain in all three formats of the game shouldn’t be judged on a big title.
Kohli led India to great heights, especially as a Test skipper but the team could not win a major title under his leadership.
Under Kohli’s captain, India made it to the 2017 Champions Trophy final but lost to arch-rivals Pakistan. India was also able to qualify for the semifinals of the 2019 World Cup but lost to New Zealand. Team India suffered a heart-breaking loss against the Kiwis in the 2021 Test Championship final. Thus, the team failed to cross the final hurdles of marquee events despite performing consistently throughout the tournament.
Shastri added that India’s big players and former captains like Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble and Rahul Dravid could not win a major title in their respective careers and it doesn’t make them bad players.
“Many big players have not won a World Cup. That’s alright. (Sourav) Ganguly, (Rahul) Dravid, (Anil) Kumble also have not won. So can we label them as bad players?” Shastri told PTI.
“You can’t generalize. You go and play. How many World Cup winning captains do we have. Sachin Tendulkar had to play six World Cups before winning it,” he pointed out.
“At the end of the day, you are judged by how you play, are you an ambassador of the game? Do you play the game with integrity, and do you play for a long period of time? That’s how you judge players at the end of it all.”
On the other hand, India lost the Test series by 2-1 against South Africa. Furthermore, India suffered an ignominious loss of 3-0 in the ODI series against the Proteas. Shastri played out India’s twin losses and stated that you can’t win every game and you will need to cope with losses.
“If you lose one series, you people start criticizing… You can’t win every game, there will be wins and losses,” Shastri said.
“How can the standard go down suddenly? For five years, you have been number one side in the world. As I said, I’ve not followed a single ball in the series. But I don’t think there will be too much change in Virat Kohli.”
India will next host West Indies in the limited-overs series.
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