The current captain of the Indian cricket team, Virat Kohli, started off his career as a white-ball specialist.
Kohli had to wait a while to cement his place for India in Test cricket, especially his uneventful debut series against West Indies.
Also, the former greats of the game occupied their positions in the whites for India, making it difficult for the newcomers to feature in the side.
Then came the watershed moment in his career during the 2012 Australian tour, where he was the only Indian batsman to smash a ton in the Test series.
However, the 2014 tour to England turned out to be one of the most horrid trips for Kohli, where he repeatedly fell victim to James Anderson’s nagging fifth stump line. Kohli could only manage 132 runs in the ten innings of the series.
The Indian run-machine was forced to brood in contemplation of his patchy form. Kohli displayed his mental strength by his watershed series against Australia in 2014-15 where he amassed 692 runs in eight innings as well as took up the role of captaincy.
In 2018, Kohli came back to England to bury his demons and scored a century in the Birmingham Test match. Also, during the entirety of the five-match series, Kohli ensured that he did not give away his wicket.
Former Indian cricketers, Gautam Gambhir and VVS Laxman, who have witnessed the progression of Kohli through close quarters, heaped praises on the batting maestro.
“And then when he toured England again, the way he scored a hundred in Birmingham in the first innings, that is my favourite innings of Virat Kohli. That drive and passion was very evident right from the first time I saw him but that series was very important as far as being a catalyst for him to become a true superstar of world cricket,” Laxman said on Star Sports Show’ Cricket Connected’.
“I totally agree with Laxman bhai. The sort of series it was in 2014, even though I was there on that tour. You have to give credit to MS Dhoni because a lot of careers have ended after such a series, especially in one format. But he gave that kind of security to Virat Kohli plus his own eagerness,” Gambhir added.
