The Caribbean cricket legend Sir Garry Sobers feels very happy after knowing that the Indian skipper Virat Kohli becomes the first cricketer to win the all three ICC top awards in the single year.
On Tuesday (22 January), Kohli won the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for ICC Cricketer of the Year, the ICC Men’s Test Player of the Year and the ICC ODI Player of the Year – for his extraordinary performances in 2018.
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After hearing Kohli’s retaining the ICC Cricketer of the Year award (also won in 2017), Sobers feels hugely happy by claiming that the 30-year-old Indian captain deserves this award. Kohli is only the second cricketer after the former Australian captain Ricky Ponting (2006 and 2007) to retain this special award.
The 82-year-old former West Indies captain told mid-day over the phone, “You have made my day with the great news. He is a great player and there are not many cricketers around who can match his ability. As a captain too, he is very intelligent. He deserved this award.”
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The legendary all-rounder further added, “Kohli is a great human being, a wonderful person. I met him once in Trinidad. My heartiest congratulations to him.”
Moreover, Kohli has been selected as the captain of the ICC Test Team of 2018 and the ICC ODI Team of 2018. In the last calendar year (2018), Kohli was the leading run-scorer in international cricket as he scored 2,735 runs in 47 international innings with the average of 68.37.
Kohli was the leading run-scorer in both the Test and ODI formats of 2018. The no.1 ranked Test batsman Kohli scored 1,322 runs in 24 Test innings (average 55.08) during 2018, while the no.1 ranked ODI batsman Kohli scored 1,202 runs in 14 ODI innings (average 133.55) in the same calendar year.
Kohli is currently busy in New Zealand where India is playing the five-match ODI series and three-match T20I series. However, Kohli has been rested from the last two ODIs and the subsequent entire T20I series of this tour.
