Inn an interview for Sky Sports with the Indian wicketkeeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik, Kohli highlighted the changes he has brought about in the Indian team since taking over captaincy of the men in blue from Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
The 32-year-old is considered among one of the finer batsmen ever to have played the game. He has scored over 22,000 runs in international cricket, and in the process, has broken and created numerous records. However, the captain Kohli has not been as successful as the batsman Kohli.
After India suffered a defeat against New Zealand in the 2019-21 ICC World Test Championship Final, questions were asked on his leadership abilities. Kohli’s first stint as the captain of the Indian cricket team was way back in December 2014, when India toured Australia for a four-match Test series.
In just over a couple of years, Kohli became the all-format captain of the Indian cricket team. He has led the side in quite a few ICC tournaments, but is yet to win an ICC trophy.
In the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy, which happened to be Kohli’s first ICC tournament as a captain, India lost against Pakistan in the final. Back in 2019, in the ICC Cricket World Cup, the boys in blue could only reach the semi-finals.
Yet another defeat at an ICC tournament might have raised questions on Kohli’s efficacy as a captain, but the New Delhi-born player has said that he has already achieved his goals.
“In my mind, I have already achieved what I wanted to as a leader – which is to create an environment and culture where people strive for excellence everyday,”
Kohli said to Dinesh Karthik, as quoted in News18.
“When I see us practising now, every session that we play, no one is wasting their time on the field.
That for me is so, so important because I’d rather have an hour of quality practice and I’ve done everything that I have to do, rather than lurking around for 2 to 2.5 hours and fooling around for an hour in between.
I don’t see anyone doing that anymore,”
the Indian captain further added.
