The Indian skipper, Virat Kohli has recalled the moment when decided to lift legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar on his shoulders along with other Indian cricketers after winning the 2011 World Cup. On April 2, 2011, India registered a 6-wicket win over Sri Lanka at Wankhede Stadium in the finals to become the world champion for the second time. After the win, the whole team had carried Sachin on their shoulder in a lap of honor.
During a recent chat with the Indian opener, Mayank Agarwal in the Latest Episode of the “Open nets with Mayank”, Kohli recalled the “lap of honor” given to Sachin.
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Recalling the incident, Virat said, “Firstly my feeling was of gratitude that we had won the World Cup. I felt absolute joy. But invariably everyone’s feeling was centered around “Paaji” (Sachin Tendulkar) because we knew this was his last chance to win the World Cup and whatever he had done for the country for so many years, ‘n’ number of games he has contributed to India’s winning cause and given us all motivation and inspiration.”
He further elaborated, “This was that gift from all of those people for him because he kept giving, giving, giving for India and I thought what better way at his home ground to realize his dream and then he gets a lap of honour. So, we felt like this is the ideal thing to do for him, and we went ahead and did it.”
Kohli and Mayank can be expected to be seen playing for their respective franchises Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) respectively in the Indian Premier League (IPL) starting from September 19 in the UAE.
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The comparisons between Kohli and Sachin Tendulkar have a regular for the Indian fans and a lot of them have gone on to predict that the current Indian skipper to break the records set by Tendulkar. Tendulkar announced his retirement from international cricket after scoring 100 international centuries, while Kohli is already standing at the tally at 70 centuries across all formats.
In the current scenario, Virat is standing at the numero uno position in the ICC ODI rankings while he is in the second place in Tests rankings. Kohli has so far played 86 Tests, scoring 7,240 runs with 27 centuries at an average of 53.62.
