Ravi Shastri had been like a father figure in the Indian team for the youngsters and even senior players; who knew exactly how to treat his players – whether with soft words or with harsh rebukes, Ravi Shastri understood how to deal with the Indian players in his own style.
He even had to scold Virat Kohli once when the Delhi-born was getting a bit desperate to have India’s white-ball captaincy.
MS Dhoni had retired from Test cricket at the end of December 2014, and Virat Kohli took over immediately after Dhoni’s retirement Test in Australia. Virat Kohli was also the certain man to take over white-ball captaincy from Dhoni when he stepped down.
As Dhoni led India for a couple of more years in limited-overs cricket, Kohli was showing too much eagerness to get that white-ball. That’s when Ravi Shastri intervened and told Virat Kohli to respect MS Dhoni and be patient.
In the book of the former fielding coach R Sridhar, ‘My Days with the Indian Cricket Squad’, Sridhar made a staggering revelation that Virat Kohli was too desperate for the white-ball India captain before Shastri had a word with him.
“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,” R Sridhar writes in his book.
“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’.”
With Rohit Sharma winning 2 IPL titles with Mumbai Indians already by then – in 2013 and 2015 – and Kohli none with RCB, perhaps the latter was too eager to get his hands on India’s white-ball captaincy too.
Dhoni stepped down from limited-overs captaincy in January 2017, and it was Virat Kohli who got India’s white-ball captaincy. His tenure came to an abrupt end in 2021.
