Sunil Gavaskar Feels Virat Kohli Has To Win World Cups To Prove His Standing As A Captain

Former Indian opener Sunil Gavaskar has highlighted what Virat Kohli needs to do to prove himself as a captain. Virat Kohli has racked up some of the most crushing wins as the skipper and scored a truckload of runs since donning the captain’s hat in 2016. Sunil Gavaskar believes that the Delhi-born cricketer needs to earn World Cups to solidify his legacy.

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Virat Kohli entered the 2019 World Cup as his first 50-over World Cup as the captain and India participated as one of the frontrunners too. The men in blue finished the group stage as the table-toppers, suffering their only loss to England. However, they crashed out of the tournament in the semi-finals, losing to New Zealand in a low-scoring game. The prolific duo of Kohli and Rohit Sharma failed to get going in the crucial encounter.

Sunil Gavaskar conceded that a captain gets defined by the world championships/World Cups they clinch. He accepted that winning Asia Cup is a fantastic achievement; however, the leader needs to conquer the world and is the way their stature gets enhanced.

“A captain is defined by the world championships/world cups that he wins. You can win the Asia Cup which is fantastic, but you also want to win World Cups because that is where you’re standing as a captain is going to be enhanced,” Gavaskar said as quoted by India Today.

Sunil Gavaskar rues India’s middle-order problems at the 2019 World Cup:

The 70-year old stated that India’s top three is one of the best in the world due to which the rest of the batting line-up has not got chances in the initial phases of the ICC tournaments. Hence, in a crucial game, when the top three flounders, the number four, five, and six are not able to make up for the losses.

“India’s top-3 batting lineup is such a fabulous batting lineup that often it has happened that numbers 4 and 5 at the initial stages of the World Cups haven’t got the opportunity to play long innings, to get their eye in. Suddenly when your top-3 are dismissed cheaply, and that can happen in the odd match, unfortunately for India it has happened in a knockout game and that is where number 4, 5 and 6 haven’t been able to cope with the loss of your earlier prolific batsmen,” the Mumbai-born asserted.

“We made a mistake by not having a proper No. 4 at the 2019 World Cup” : Sunil Gavaskar

The 125-Test veteran added that the Indian team needs a settled and potent middle-order since the top three positions are occupied. Gavaskar reckoned that India’s fortunes might have been different if they had a decent number four batsman.

“What we need to look at is to have somebody at 4, 5 and 6 who are very good batsmen, who would otherwise bat at the top but because 1, 2 and 3 are occupied they are batting in the middle-order. We made a mistake by not having a proper No. 4 at the 2019 World Cup. If we had had a proper No. 4 for the World Cup then it might have been a completely different story,” he added.

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