If you want to find something that merges the people of our nation beyond all varieties in culture and religion, it is nothing but the never ending affinity towards cricket. Cricket is a lazy game as compared to tennis and football but still it is the most loved game in India.
In our country, Cricket is not considered as only sport but you can say it is a Mantra which is automatically chanted from the core of our heart and reflected back and forth through the skin and blood. Any circumstances are not able to keep the Indian cricket fan away from the game. Indian cricket is more like an addiction as it can be played on grounds, streets, inside any residential compounds, in parking slots, on terraces and any other places where there is atleast 20 square feet of empty space.
History of Indian Cricket:
Cricket has been introduced to India by Europeans in the 18th century and the first cricket club was established in Calcutta in 1792. However, India’s National Cricket Team did not play its first Test match until 25th June, 1932 at Lords. From 1932 to 1952, India had to wait for its first Test victory. The Indian team gained its original strength from 1970s with the batsmen like Gundappa Viswanath, Sunil Gavaskar, all-rounder Kapil Dev, Indian spin quartet of Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Srinivas Venkataraghavan and Bishen Singh Bedi.
India already won the Cricket World Cup twice – first time in 1983 under the captaincy of Kapil Dev and another in 2011 under the captaincy of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Indian has also won the ICC World Twenty20 in 2007 and ICC Champions Trophy in 2013 under captaincy of MS Dhoni.
Now, Virat Kohli is the current Captain of Indian National Cricket Team.
Virat Kohli in Indian Cricket Team:
Virat Kohli is well known not only as Captain of India Cricket Team but also popular as an individual cricketer (Batsman). He is 30 years old, modern and one of the richest sportsmen in the world. Born and brought up in Delhi, Virat represented city’s cricket team at different age group before making his first class debut in 2006. He was the captain of the Under-19s Indian Cricket Team and got the victory at 2008 Under-19s World Cup in Malaysia and after few months, he was able to make his ODI debut at Indian National Cricket team at the age of 19 and eventually made himself permanent and was part of the squad that won 2011 World Cup.
Virat Kohli as a Captain:
Virat Kohli was appointed as the Vice-Captain of the ODI team in 2012 and after the retirement of MS Dhoni from the Test Captaincy, Kohli handed over the Test Captaincy in 2014. In 2017, Virat Kohli took the opportunity and became One-day (Limited Overs) Captain of Indian National Cricket Team.
Records of Kohli:
Virat Kohli has already made the record for the fastest batsman who completed 10,000 runs in 205 innings. Kohli holds several Indian batting records including fastest ODI century, the highest number of centuries in run-chases in the world. He is currently holding the records of most runs in a single tournament for both Twenty20 and IPL. He also makes the record of hitting most fours in T20. In fact, as a Captain, Kohli became the first Asian Captain who wins the Test match in Australia, England and South Africa in December 2018.
Role of Virat Kohli in Test Captaincy:
In the first test of the Australian tour in December 2014 where Dhoni was not the part of the match due to an injury, Kohli took the position as a Test Captain for the first time. He scored 115 in the first innings becoming the fourth Indian to score hundred on test match captaincy debut. In the second innings where India was set the target of 364, Kohli came and started batting from 57/2 score of India. Before the 3rd wicket of Vijay, the target run was 242/2. India was bowled out for 315 where Kohli made 141 with 175 balls being the top score. In the second match after returning of Dhoni, Kohli scored 19. However, Kohli was the top Indian scorer in both the innings. In the whole Test series in Australia with four tests matches, Kohli has scored 692 runs which were the most by an Indian batsman for Test series in Australia.
Role of Kohli in Limited Over’s Captaincy:
Kohli started his limited over captaincy with 91 and 59 scores in the two ODIs of the limited over’s tour of Australia. In the next two, he made 117 and 106 runs and during the series, he became the first batsman in the world to cross 7000 runs in ODI in 161 innings and the fastest batsman to get to 25th centuries. However, India loss the ODI in 1-4 but again in T20 series, India defeats Australia in 3-0.
In the same year, India also won the Asia Cup in Bangladesh under the captaincy of Virat. Kohli maintained his match winning form in ICC World Twenty20 in 2016. His total run of 273 runs in five matches earned him his second consecutive Man of the Tournament Award at World Twenty20.
In 2017, he got the chance to captain in ICC tournament for the first time. In this match, in semi-final against Bangladesh, he scored 96 and became the fastest batsman who reached 8000 runs in ODIs in 175 innings. However, India lost the final against Pakistan by 180 runs.
During ODI Test series in 2018 against West Indies, Kohli became the 12th batsman and fastest player to score 10,000 runs with an average of 59.62 in his own Captaincy.
After that also, he broke lots of records being as an Indian cricket player, as a Captain and as a batsman.
Conclusion:
Kohli is a naturally aggressive with strong technical skills batsman. He mainly bats in the middle order but in some cases, he also played as an opening batsman. From the day 1, he is a good cricketer. When he bats, when he fields, when he gets wicket, he has been an aggressive intent cricketer. So, that is his style whether he is playing as a captain or only as a player in the Indian team, we can say he is always best at his own form.
