Virat Kohli is currently in England – where he is leading Team India as the Men in Blue bid for their third ICC Cricket World Cup title.
This will be Kohli’s first World Cup as a captain and third as a player. He was a part of the Indian squad which lifted the coveted trophy under MS Dhoni in 2011. The 30-year-old has been in sublime form in the run-up to the World Cup and will look to continue his purple patch into the showpiece event.
Speaking to TV presenter Ridhima Pathak at the Captains’ Day in London, Kohli has said that if he had the opportunity to pick one player from the past generation to have in his current team and rub shoulders with, he would pick the former Australian leg spinner Shane Warne.
Warne holds second place in the list of the highest Test wicket-takers, behind Muttiah Muralitharan. But it’s not just in Test cricket that the Australian excelled; he boasts of an outstanding ODI record as well.
Warne scalped 293 wickets in 194 games at an average of just over 25. He was a part of the World Cup winning team of Australia in 1999.
Warne, who bid adieu to the game in 2007, was known as a very intelligent bowler. Although he had a wide array of skills which included the googly, the top spinner and the flipper, he also had a thinking head on his shoulders. That quality is what Kohli seems fascinated with.
“One guy that I would love to have from the past would be Shane Warne. I would have loved to watch him bowl if I was in the same team being on the field, just watching him bowl and what he did to the batsmen would have been amazing,” the Indian captain was quoted as saying.
The world number one batsman also picked South African skipper Faf du Plessis in his side from the other participating teams in the 2019 World Cup, starting on May 30 in UK.
