Indian men’s cricket team captain Virat Kohli is a household name in world cricket. The Delhi-born possesses multiple records under his belt, and he is already considered as the ‘legend’. Many experts and pundits of the captivating game rate Kohli as one of the best batsman across formats.
Since his international debut in 2008, Kohli has already scored over 20,000 international runs, with 70 international centuries. The 31-year-old is also just 7 ODI tons away from breaking legendary Sachin Tendulkar’s world record of 49 ODI hundreds.
Apart from being a consistent run-scorer, Kohli is equally dominant in captaincy. His aggression in leadership has led to comparisons with many former captains.
Kohli took over the Test captaincy from MS Dhoni in 2014. Then in 2017, Kohli became the limited-overs skipper. Last year, he also became the first-ever Indian captain to win a Test series against Australia in Australia. During the 2018-19 tour, India registered a 2-1 victory over the Tim Paine-led Australian side.
Speaking about the same, former Australian fast bowler, Brett Lee said that Kohli’s captaincy is quite similar to ex-Australia captain Ricky Ponting.
“Everyone’s got different styles of captaincy. If you see Ricky Ponting and Virat Kohli, you could say there are some similarities between their captaincy styles. They’ve got that raw aggression, but it’s not necessarily over the top,” Lee told Times of India.
“There have been times where every captain’s gone over the top from every nation. But I’ve enjoyed watching Kohli’s captaincy. Because real passion comes through. He wants to do really well for the team,” he added.
The former New South Wales cricketer hailed Kohli for his incredible batting as well. He reckoned that Kohli is quite similar to Ponting in terms of batting.
“Apart from his (Kohli) captaincy, he does well with the bat personally. He is the same as Ricky Ponting. He had that real powerful aggression but not too much. There’s a nice balance, I think. They are pretty similar when it comes to captaincy. And also, they’ve got a great ability to read the players. So, you think about Ponting the way he had set the fields, very attacking fields; I see the same In Kohli. Kohli is happy to attack,” Lee added further.
