Former India fielding coach R. Sridhar revealed that Ravi Shastri told Virat Kohli to wait until Mahendra Singh Dhoni hands him over the white-ball captaincy.
In his book ‘Coaching Beyond: My Days With Indian Cricket Team’, co-authored by veteran journalist R Kaushik, the 42nd chapter opens up on an incident from 2016 when it was early days for Kohli in the team. The star batter was already leading the red-ball team at that time and was the skipper-elect to take over from Dhoni in terms of the limited-overs team.
The former India coach told the star batter that unless he respects Dhoni now, no one will respect him when he eventually becomes captain.
“There was a time in 2016 when Virat was very eager to be the captain of the white-ball team too. He said a few things that showed he was looking for the captaincy,” Sridhar narrated.
“One evening, Ravi called him and said, ‘Look, Virat, MS gave it (the captaincy) to you in red-ball cricket. You have to respect him. He will give it to you in limited-overs cricket, too, when the time is right. Unless you respect him now, tomorrow when you are the captain, you won’t get the respect from your team’,” Sridhar said.
Sridhar also said that Kohli took Shastri’s advice on board and got the white-ball captaincy in a year’s time.
“Respect him (Dhoni) now, irrespective of what is going on. It will come to you, you don’t have to run behind it.’” Shastri told Kohli.
