Former India fielding coach R.K. Sridhar revealed that Ravi Shastri asked Virat Kohli to wait till MS Dhoni handed over the limited-overs captaincy to him. In his book ‘Coaching Beyond: My Days with the Indian Cricket Team’ co-authored by veteran journalist R Kaushik, the 42nd chapter shares an incident from 2016 when Kohli was in his initial days with the team. The star batsman was already leading the Test team and was chosen to take over the captaincy from Dhoni in the case of the limited overs team.
R Sridhar quoted PTI as saying that Kohli was very keen to take over the white-ball captaincy, but Shastri intervened and told him to respect Dhoni and that the wicket-keeper would hand over the reigns when the time was right. He told, “There was a time in 2016 when Virat was very keen to become the captain of the white-ball team as well. He said some such things which showed that he was looking for the captaincy.
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He further added, “One evening, Ravi called him and said, ‘Look, Virat, MS had given you (the captaincy) in red-ball cricket. You have to respect that. He will also give you chances in limited overs cricket when the time is right. Unless you respect him now, tomorrow when you are the captain, you will not get respect from your team.
R Sridhar also said that Kohli took Shastri’s advice on board and gained the captaincy in limited-overs cricket.
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The former fielding coach explained, “Respect him (Dhoni) now, whatever is going on. It will come to you, you don’t need to run after it. Shastri told Kohli, Virat took advice on the board. Eventually, within a year, he got the white-ball captaincy as well. He is (was) the one who delivers the tough messages-calls regarding the exclusion of the concerned players from the XI.
