Approaching his 100th Test match, Batting great Virat Kohli said he is “grateful” for everything that his journey as an India player has had in store. Kohli said it is a “big moment”, not just for him but his family and his childhood coach Rajkumar Sharma, who have both remained his biggest support.
Kohli also highlighted his excellent fitness regime as one key factor behind his longevity and sustenance at the highest level in an excessively busy cricketing calendar. Kohli has been an all-format star for India, who only recently relinquished his captaincy duties, which he did for best part of seven years.
“I honestly never thought that I will play 100 Test matches. It’s been a long journey. Played a lot of cricket over the course of these 100 Test matches, lot of international cricket. I am just grateful that I have been able to make it to 100,”
“With the amount of cricket we play in this day and age, God’s been kind. I have worked really hard on my fitness. It’s a big moment for me, my family and my coach, who is happy and proud of this Test as long as I am concerned,”
Kohli said in an interview with BCCI.tv.
A major portion of Kohli’s Test career coincided with him being an India captain. He took over the reins from MS Dhoni back in early 2015 and continued at the helm till January 2022. Under him, the Indian team remained a dominant force at home but also improved their record abroad.
With an unprecedentedly good pace attack up his sleeves, Kohli and his men conjured up successive Test series wins in Australia either side of ones in West Indies and Sri Lanka. India pulled off impressive Test match wins in South Africa and England as well.
But beyond his terrific captaincy record, Kohli’s tenure is remembered for setting in place a culture of excellence where the team didn’t settle for sporadic success and played a brand of cricket that filled the stands, not just in India but abroad.
“The way people look at Test cricket being played under me as Indian team or just the way I went about playing Test cricket and how I thought and wanted to play Test cricket, it hasn’t happened by chance,”
“I have put in a lot of effort, I have made sure that core moral values when it comes to the game remains intact, which is wanting to play Test cricket and wanting the purest form of the game to stay alive. For that we needed to play in a certain manner. I have given my heart and soul to this format,”
he said.
Kohli enters his 100th Test – which he calls a “surreal” milestone – with a proud record under his belt as a batter. The mighty right-hand batter has struck 7,962 runs from his 99 Tests at a fantastic average of 50.39, including 27 hundreds and 28 fifties. Kohli’s record features seven double hundreds to his name.
During the interview, Kohli said his first hundred changed a lot of things for him. Kohli made a fighting 116 out of India’s measly 272 in the Adelaide 2012 Test to take his first giant leap as a Test cricketer. Kohli had struggled against pace and bounce in his debut series in West Indies six months earlier but come Australia, he was an improved batter on that front. Hardwork and constant evolution has remained a hallmark of the great batter’s illustrious career.
