Indian skipper, Virat Kohli’s magical innings in Nagpur left former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly open-mouthed. He even backed Kohli to perform well on upcoming overseas Test tours which will be key not only for Kohli but for Team India as well.
Kohli scored his fifth double hundred in Tests and leveled the record of legend Brian Lara’s most double centuries by a skipper in Test cricket. Rohit Sharma too scored his hundred as India put a huge lead of 405 runs before the skipper declared the innings.
Sri Lanka faced an early shock with the wicket of Samarawickrama, thanks to Ishant Sharma. The visitors stood at 21/1, trailing by 384 runs at the end of the day 3.
Talking about Kohli, Sourav said, “He’s fantastic with the way he’s gone about his career. He just keeps getting better and better. Every era has produced champions in Indian cricket whether it was Gavaskar, Tendulkar and now its Kohli. It’s great to watch him and it’s great news for Indian cricket that somebody keeps the baton going in every era. Hopefully, he keeps continuing in the next 15-16 months when it’s going to be difficult conditions for India.”
Recently, Ricky Ponting expressed his thoughts about Kohli Australian counterpart, Steve Smith, that the latter is the best batsmen of the modern era. Speaking on the debate, Ganguly said, “Steve Smith is a champion batsman if you compare both the hundreds today maybe in terms of the bowling quality England was a better bowling attack than Sri Lanka. But that doesn’t take anything away from Kohli. You play what you get and I think he has been fantastic.”
He further elaborated, “He’s got four back-to-back Test hundreds in Australia, he’s got a hundred in South Africa. England is the only place he hasn’t conquered but that was an old Virat Kohli back then. Let Kohli go to England this summer and I have a huge feeling that he will turn the record out there as well. Let’s not compare Steve Smith and Virat Kohli. For me, both of them are right up there and they are the two best batsmen in the world at the moment.”
Sourav concluded by calling Virat a special player, he said, “Virat Kohli is special. I’ve seen players and I’ve played with the greats. His energy, his hunger, the way he turns tables around from the way he keeps scoring runs is phenomenal. Hopefully, he can carry this forward and do even better.”
