Dilip Vengsarkar Introduced Virat Kohli Into The Indian Team: Ex-BCCI General Manager

Former BCCI general manager Ratnakar Shetty lavished praise on former Indian captain Dilip Vengsarkar for pushing Virat Kohli into the Indian cricket team.

Kohli led the India U19 team to title triumph in 2008 after defeating Wayne Parnell-led South Africa in the final by 12 runs through the Duckworth-Lewis method. Five months after the victorious campaign, Kohli was drafted into the senior Indian team as he made his ODI debut against Sri Lanka in August 2008 in Dambulla.

Virat Kohli completed 100 Test matches

Since then Kohli has emerged as one of the greatest batters for India, entering and re-writing records in the history of the game. Kohli has 70 international hundreds in his bag (43 in ODIs and 27 in Tests) and is just one shy of equalising former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting’s tally of 71.

In the first Test against Sri Lanka in Mohali, Kohli became the 12th Indian player to complete 100 Test matches after the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly.

Dilip Vengsarkar pushed Virat Kohli into the Emerging player’s tournament: Ratnakar Shetty

Kohli made his international debut during the tenure of Vengsakar as BCCI’s chairman of the selection committee. Shetty, who is also a chemistry professor, credited Vengsarkar for showing faith in a young Kohli and pushed him forward to play.

“I have not seen a chairman in selection committee better than Dilip Vengsarkar in my tenure in BCCI.  We celebrated Virat Kohli’s 100 Test, but I know the truth that when he came back from ICC World Cup U-19, he (Vengsarkar) pushed him (Kohli) into the Emerging player’s tournament, sent him to Australia where Virat got a hundred in the final, which we won,” Shetty told during the launch of his book On Board: My Years in BCCI.

“He came back (and) Dilip introduced him into the Indian team and brought him into this mainstream of Indian cricket. Not only that, even in the Greg Chappell era, difficult times in Indian cricket, some of the cricketers were left in the lurch at that time. 

“Many of them came back to play for India when he (Vengsarkar) became chairman of the selection committee. Because, he had that power and he could take such decisions. That was Dilip Vengsarkar,” Shetty added. 

Kohli has scored 23614 international runs across all three formats of the game and is currently placed seventh in the list of leading run-scorer in international cricket.

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