Sourav Ganguly Backs Virat Kohli as Captain of Indian Team

Updated - 24 Jan 2018, 11:38 AM

India South Africa Virat Kohli Sourav Ganguly
Sourav Ganguly feels Virat Kohli's form is necessary for India's triumph in South Africa. Image Courtesy: Getty Images

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India captain, Virat Kohli, is under the scanner nowadays for team India’s poor performance on the tour of South Africa. To add to it, the reaction of Kohli to the questions asked by journalists during the presser did rest of the work, and now, he is the talk of the town for all the bad reasons despite playing well in the second Test of the series.

India South Africa Graeme Smith
Graeme Smith.

Former South Africa skipper, Graeme Smith, had already questioned Virat Kohli’s future as a captain and the remarks may continue to come in if team India loses the limited-overs series as well.

Amidst this, Sourav Ganguly, the former India captain, has backed Kohli, as he has opined that Kohli will continue to be a very good captain,

“There is lot of talk going around about Virat Kohli’s leadership qualities. It is important to be patient as it is his first big overseas tour. Nobody really is a born leader and it is important that leaders are allowed to develop and grow. I am convinced Kohli will keep getting better at this. It is very important that as a leader you keep performing – that is the biggest challenge and this is where Kolhi has done remarkably well. There is no doubt that he is and will continue to be a very good captain,” he wrote in his column for TOI.

The Test series loss against South Africa was the first ever series loss for the Indian cricket team under Kohli in Tests. In fact, before this, team India had lost just two games under him (as full-time captain for a complete series) out of which first came against Sri Lanka in 2015 while the second one came against Australia in Pune last year.

It was also the first time when team India travelled outside Asia and West Indies for a Test series under him, and on the first tour, the captain failed to deliver, continuing the tradition of Indian captains failing to put on a good show on foreign tours.

Prior to him, MS Dhoni had too failed to continue good form on foreign soils as captain and after losing out to Australia in 2014/15 Tets series, he decided to call it quits mid-way the series, handing the mantle to Kohli.

This is just the first series loss for Kohli, and surely, he has lots of time to ponder what went wrong on tour.

However, with the tours of England, Australia and New Zealand lined-up in next one year, team India has to find a solution to their problems soon or else, one can see the present Indian captain also leaving captaincy job soo.

Follow India’s tour to South Africa here: South Africa Vs India – Freedom Series

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Graeme Smith Indian National Cricket Team Sourav Ganguly Virat Kohli