Kohli is next in line for long-term captaincy

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Virat Kohli is Indian cricket’s batting prince who is the clear heir to the throne. The day cannot be far off when he will be leading Team India, perhaps as soon as Dhoni gives up his occupation of the hot seat. Insiders aver that Dhoni will continue to lead Team India until he himself wishes to give up the job. But, as the saying goes, you can’t keep a good man down for long, which is why Kohli will be the next in line to be a long term skipper.

Those with whom Kohli may have had to compete for the captaincy are already on a path of self destruction with Virender Sehwag hardly able to justify his place in the team and Gautam Gambhir’s batting being gnawed at by all kinds of worries. As early as 2015, or even a year earlier, Kohli will ascend the throne and keep his place there so long as his magical form with the bat does not desert him.

No Indian batsman has had such a phenomenal run across three formats for a whole year as Kohli who has been astoundingly consistent with only three single figure dismissals in 34 innings for India in 2012. The more risks a format demands from a batsman, the more Kohli seems to thrive. He is like a sponge simply lapping up all that pressure. We knew this would be the man he would become when we heard the story about how Virat, after learning about his father’s death early in the morning, went to the Ranji game and batted on to save Delhi with a near century before heading off to the funeral. And he did that when he was just 18.

He is 23 and already has 13 ODI hundreds, more than anyone in history after having passed the young Pakistan batsman and dethroned captain, Salman Butt. He is so consistent in T20s as to be amazing while having conquered Test cricket after a sluggish start in a breakthrough hundred at Adelaide this year and then a century against New Zealand at home for an average of 63 in Tests, 73 in ODIs and 47 in T20 internationals. There really could have been no contest for the ICC award of the ODI Player of the Year, which was unanimously his.

Kohli is so focused as to want to desperately lead Team India. As its young captain he has already won the junior World Cup. He sees that as a mere start. He wants the national job and he is willing to put away all distractions to reach his goal. Having sportingly accepted that he had allowed heady early IPL seasons to get to his head, he is now the reformed young man whose only calling is the game in which he wishes to accumulate runs.

With a focused mind and a front foot and back foot cover drives which come off as if on a silken thread from the willow you are certain to be a winner.

Kohli is already a great example for all those young and talented cricketers because unlike the many who came on the scene like a meteor only to burn out from the fame and fortune far too soon.

The maturity in him is reflected in his batting form which has been at an apogee in ODIs, with a run of five hundreds in just eight games and a couple of big hundreds among those, including one even more against the clock versus Sri Lanka as India had to met a 320-plus target in 40 overs to stay in the hunt for a place in the tri-series finals Down Under. And then there was the 183 against Pakistan in the Asia Cup when India were chasing 330.

And for a batsman so young he believes already in the primacy of Test cricket. In short, he is quite an unusually accomplished man for his age even in a sport full of young stars.

“I think that is the most satisfying, when you’re being tested and your patience is being tested, your technique is tested and you manage to score a hundred — it always pleases a batsman,” he said of the first of his Test hundreds. Surely, he is headed for greatness.