Former Indian Fielding Coach Makes Shocking Revelation On Virat Kohli Wanting MS Dhoni’s White-Ball Captaincy In 2016

Virat Kohli's relationship with former Indian skipper MS Dhoni is known to everyone. His admiration for Dhoni is one of a kind. Kohli made his International debut under Dhoni's captaincy regime and then went on to become his successor as one of the most successful Indian skippers. 

New Delhi: Virat Kohli’s relationship with former Indian skipper MS Dhoni is known to everyone. His admiration for Dhoni is one of a kind. Kohli made his International debut under Dhoni’s captaincy regime and then went on to become his successor as one of the most successful Indian skippers.

He first took over as the red-ball skipper in 2014 when Dhoni announced his retirement from the format. Although, former Indian fielding coach R Sridhar made a shocking revelation about Virat Kohli eagerly wanting Dhoni’s white-ball captaincy too in 2016.

“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 revealed the detail in his new book, ‘Coaching Beyond- My days with the Indian cricket team’, which is written by R Kaushik.

Sridhar also told how Ravi Shatri intervened in the matter and advised Kohli to wait for Dhoni to hand him the captaincy in white-ball cricket.

“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. Respect him now, irrespective of what is going on. It will come to you, you don’t have to run behind it’,” he added.

Dhoni eventually handed over the white-ball captaincy to Virat in 2017 and even played under his regime for a couple of years before announcing his retirement from International Cricket on August 15, 2020.