Some time ago the rivalry between Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma used to be a topic of discussion. Just like in Tennis, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi were not highlighted much for winning a Grand Slam doubles title, but they were in news due to disputes between them, that became the subject of discussion, but in cricket a day before the departure to South Africa, Virat Kohli in his press conference praised Rohit Sharma and gave wishes for his success in white ball cricket but his one sentence brought to the fore the differences between him and Board President.
Saurav had said in the past that the BCCI had advised Virat not to leave the captaincy of the T20 cricket team and also said that the captaincy of T20 and One Day should not be given to different persons. But Virat wanted to remain captain in the ODIs. Virat put Sourav in the dock by saying in the press conference that he did not talk to anyone about this. One and a half hours before the announcement of the Test team for the South Africa tour, he was informed by the selectors about making Rohit the captain of the ODI team. That is, in a way he proved Sourav to be a liar, but one truth is that neither of them is ready to give up.
Actually, Sourav and Virat have been very aggressive type players who can be called natural born leaders. While Sourav got used to winning Team India overseas, Virat picked up the task at even greater speed and defeated Australia in Australia twice and beat England in England and got a lead of 2-1.
While Sourav backed players from Zaheer Khan to Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Ashish Nehra etc, Virat supported the wrist spinners in the form of Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav. Apart from that, he has supported Mohammad Siraj, Varun Aaron and also took the initiative to introduce Jasprit Bumrah in red ball cricket. The result is in front of everyone.
At the same time, a big difference between the two is that while Sourav Ganguly used to fight with the selectors to select the player of his choice. Virat is far behind Sourav in this area. Remember India’s tour of Australia in 2003-04 when the selectors did not want to include Anil Kumble in the team but Sourav was adamant. Eventually the selectors agreed to keep Kumble in the team on the condition that if Kumble did not perform, Sourav would have to step down from the captaincy. Dada agreed. In this tour, Kumble proved to be the highest wicket-taker for India, but when Virat was not given his favorite players – Yuzvendra Chahal and Mohammad Siraj for the T20 World Cup, Virat was far from fighting for them but calm.
Not only this, in the Cape Town Test of the 2018 South African tour, Bhuvneshwar Kumar performed superbly and dropped from the next Test. This decision of Virat was criticized a lot. Similarly, in the recent tour of England, R Ashwin was left out of the whole series and also not picked up against Pakistan and New Zealand in the T20 World Cup. In all subsequent matches, Ashwin proved to be a big asset of Team India, but by then it was too late.
Apart from this, while Virat was seen walking on the five-bowler formula in the playing XI, Saurabh did not compromise in less than six batsmen. Sourav believed that unless the team scored a big score, the opposition team could not be brought under the pressure of runs. At the same time, Virat’s thinking has been from the beginning that for the opposition team to take 20 wickets, it is very important to field five bowlers.
