Former India fielding coach R. Sridhar revealed that Ravi Shastri asked Virat Kohli to wait until MS Dhoni hands him the captaincy of limited-overs cricket. In his book ‘Coaching Beyond: My Days With Indian Cricket Team’, co-authored by veteran journalist R Kaushik, the 42nd chapter shares the incident from 2016 when it was the early days for Kohli in the team. The star batter was already leading the Test team and was the skipper-elect to take over from Dhoni in terms of the limited-overs team.

R Sridhar, as quoted by PTI, wrote that Kohli was very eager to take the white-ball captaincy, but Shastri intervened and asked him to respect Dhoni and said the wicketkeeper will be handing over reigns when the time is right. He narrated, “There was a time in 2016 when Virat was very eager to be the captain of the white-ball team too. He said a few things that showed he was looking for the captaincy.”

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He further added, “One evening, Ravi called him and said, ‘Look, Virat, MS gave it (the captaincy) to you in red-ball cricket. You have to respect him. He will give it to you in limited-overs cricket, too, when the time is right. Unless you respect him now, tomorrow when you are the captain, you won’t get the respect from your team’.”

R Sridhar also said that Kohli took Shastri’s advice on board and got the captaincy in limited-overs cricket. 

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The former fielding coach explained, “Respect him (Dhoni) now, irrespective of what is going on. It will come to you, you don’t have to run behind it.’” Shastri told Kohli “To his credit, Virat took the advice on board. Eventually, in a year’s time, he got the white-ball captaincy too. He is (was) the one who passes on the tough messages-calls pertaining to being dropped from the XI to the players concerned.”