While praising Sourav Ganguly’s captaincy, Virender Sehwag said he doubted if Virat Kohli backed his players as much as the former.
Virat Kohli‘s captaincy era will go down in the history of Indian cricket as one of the most successful across all formats in terms of number of matches won and win percentage. Kohli might have failed to win any big ICC tournament but he infused a ‘win at any cost’ mentality in the team which showed in the results that his team achieved in bilateral cricket.
But former India opener Virender Sehwag feels that the best captain is the one who builds a new team and, in that respect, he rates former India captain and current BCCI chief Sourav Ganguly higher than others, including Kohli.
“Sourav Ganguly built a new team, brought in new players and backed them through their highs and lows,” remembered Sehwag. “I doubt if Kohli did that in his tenure,” he added during an exclusive interaction on Home of Heroes, on Sports18.
Ganguly took over as India’s captain around the turn of the century and instilled a fighting spirit in the team which saw India achieve great results at home and away. He also backed future stars like Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh among others through good and bad form, something he feels Kohli didn’t do with some players.
“In my opinion, the No.1 captain is the one who builds a team and gives confidence to his players. He (Kohli) backed some players, some he did not,” Sehwag said.
Kohli stepped down from T20I captaincy after India campaign in the 2021 ICC T20 World Cup. He was replaced by Rohit Sharma in ODIs towards the end of last year, while he stepped down from Test captaincy after India’s loss to South Africa earlier this year.
Rohit Sharma is now India’s captain in all formats
Source : Ndtv Sports