Tag: Virat Kohli

Taylor remarked on the shift since 2008, highlighting how players now endorse products online. Kohli, a cricket sensation turned global sports icon, ranks alongside Ronaldo and Messi on Instagram and social media…reports Asian Lite News

Former New Zealand batter Ross Taylor has heaped praises on former India captain Virat Kohli, labelling him as the “global superstar in the world of sports” and not just cricket. The former India captain enjoys a huge fan following on social media. Taylor while speaking about the impact of social media on a cricketer’s life said that players are now more accessible and it is not a bad thing in the modern-day era.

Taylor, who has played 112 Tests, and 236 ODIs for New Zealand, shared his insights in Episode six of the podcast series “180 Not Out.

“Players are putting outposts endorsing products and things like that. Who would have thought of that in 2008? Someone like Kohli, who is a superstar in the world of cricket, but is also a global superstar in the world of sports. In terms of Instagram and social media, he’s up there with Ronaldo and Messi!”

“Yeah, I think you are more accessible, I don’t think sportsmen are just as critiqued. I think movie stars, Bollywood stars, politicians are all under the microscope now because of social media but I don’t think that is a bad thing,” Taylor told Raman Raheja, a sports fan, sportspreneur, media professional, and creator who put together this Podcast “180 Not Out”.

Former Australian pacer Brett Lee said the mobile camera was both the best thing and the worst thing to get invented in the advent of social media. Lee traced the early era of social media and how it changed in the last few years.

“In the early 2000s, when the phones came in, people would take a photo with you. There was an autograph and a photo. In mid-2015 and 2020, what happens now is that the players are always on show now. Anyone that is playing in the Indian Premier League, they are always on show, they go out for dinner, and someone comes with a phone camera,” said Lee.

“The phone camera was the best thing and the worst thing ever invented. The best thing is to capture beautiful memories with your family and friends, and as a spectator and lover of the sport, you also capture those moments. But also, the privacy now, for players, has been cut in half because you are on show everywhere.

“If you are having a dinner with your family, your loved ones, friends…someone takes a snap and it goes instantly all over the world. Now, you also have to be able to deal with that and accept that,” he added.

Former Australian cricketer Michael Bevan also graced the podcast series. The star batter emphasised that social media might impact the performance of young players.

“The younger generation uses social media that would impact their situation and circumstance and career. They would have to make a decision on whether they want to read the comments, or how much they want to post,” said Bevan.

“I could imagine it would be extra difficult for some of the modern-day players, with T20 cricket, with social media…but as a player, you’ve always got to make the decision on how you handle. Do you want to read things or do you not want to read things? That’s the most important thing… to understand yourself, and to understand your game,” he added.

The ground-breaking podcast series by Raman Raheja is diving deep into the rich 180-year history of cricket, tracing its evolution from its colonial origins to its current stature as a global phenomenon.

In subsequent episodes, the “180 Not Out” podcast will cover a diverse range of topics including the sport’s impact on players, leagues, controversies, commercialisation, challenges, coaching, fitness, demographics, formats, records, and future prospects.

Shot at the backdrop of the Legends League Cricket (LLC), hosted by Raman Raheja, it is perhaps going to be the biggest Cricket Podcast featuring 60+ Legends in a single season.

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Kohli, who pulled out of ongoing Tests against England due to personal reasons, led the team in 68 Test matches and won 40 of them, making him India’s most successful captain…reports Asian Lite News

Former India head coach Ravi Shastri said his aim was to win and make Test cricket paramount and, in this pursuit, he identified an uncut diamond in Virat Kohli, who would go on to captain the team in this format.

Kohli, who pulled out of ongoing Tests against England due to personal reasons, led the team in 68 Test matches and won 40 of them, making him India’s most successful captain. He gave up Test captaincy after India lost the series in South Africa 2-1 in 2021/22.

Under his captaincy, India got their first-ever Test series win in Australia in 2018/19, as well as making it to the final of the inaugural edition of the World Test Championship in 2021, where they lost to New Zealand at Southampton.

“There was a lot of individual brilliance but I wanted to see team brilliance. I wanted to win and to make Test cricket paramount and identified an uncut diamond in Virat Kohli. While (MS) Dhoni was my captain, my eye was on him (Kohli). I told him very early in my second month: ‘It’ll take time but watch, observe, be ready (for the captaincy)’,” said Shastri to Michael Atherton in a conversation for The Times.

Shastri, a member of India’s 1983 ODI World Cup winning team, had initially joined the Indian team in 2014 as a team director and became the head coach in 2017 till 2021 Men’s T20 World Cup. He was also appreciative of Kohli’s willingness to play Test cricket and do the tough things for needing to succeed in the format.

“Kohli was fully engaged with Test cricket. He was passionate. He was prepared to do the hard yards and was prepared to play tough cricket, which fitted my way of thinking. When you play Australia or Pakistan you’ve got to have a ‘no complaints’, ‘no excuses’ attitude.”

“We were on the same page and wanted a battery of fast bowlers. He was ready for a scrap. He wanted to play hard. We made it a free-for-all in the nets. You were allowed to bounce the shit out of anyone. He was the first guy to embrace it; he was quite prepared to look ugly in the nets and the mindset changed.”

That battery of fast-bowlers helped India unearth a gem in Jasprit Bumrah, who recently became the first fast-bowler from the country to sit at top of ICC Test Rankings. Bumrah had taken a match haul of nine wickets in India’s 106-run win over England in the second Test at Visakhapatnam and also became the fastest Indian bowler to reach 150 wickets in the format.

Shastri recalled how eager Bumrah was about succeeding in Test cricket. “I remember my first call to him, it was in Kolkata. I asked him would he be interested in Test cricket. He said that would be the biggest day of his life.”

“He was labelled as a white-ball cricketer without asking him. But I knew. I wanted to see how hungry he was. I told him to get ready, be prepared. I told him I was going to unleash him in South Africa.”

“He’s so excited to be playing and doing well in Test cricket. He was desperate to play Test cricket with Virat Kohli. They know, at the end of the day, no one remembers white ball averages. They will always remember your numbers in Test cricket,” he concluded.

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After a wait of 1205 days, Kohli registered his first Test century since 2019 and overall 28th, in the fourth Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy earlier this month…reports Asian Lite News

Star India batter Virat Kohli has said that he felt a sense of calmness and excitement after scoring a hundred against Australia in Ahmedabad which ended his three-year century drought in Test cricket.

After a wait of 1205 days, Kohli registered his first Test century since 2019 and overall 28th, in the fourth Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy earlier this month.

There was a gap of 41 innings between his last century and a ton in Ahmedabad, with the previous one coming over three years ago against Bangladesh in November 2019, where Kohli scored a sublime 136 at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata.

“When I made the hundred and converted it into a big one, that gave me a sense of calmness, relaxation, and excitement again. You kind of become comfortable with your game, and your thinking, and your heart is not rising before the next practice session. You eventually want to be in such a space. And that particular hundred gave me a grounded feeling back,” Kohli said in a chat with his good friend and his RCB teammate AB de Villiers on the latter’s YouTube show.

Just from a cricketing perspective. In life, I was pretty happy and relaxed. But when playing also, you want to be in that space as much as possible,” he added.

“I and AB have been in touch for a while. He knows how much I value Test cricket. Even though I had performed in T20Is again and scored ODI centuries and all that stuff, I always felt that white-ball cricket, for me, was more of a thing where if you go in with the right frame of mind on a particular day or for a certain period of time, you can get past the hurdles,” Kohli further said.

“But even though we played the Test on a wicket that is not offering too much to the bowlers, you still have to bat for good 7-8 hours sometimes, because they (Australia) are that patient with their fields and they could go defensive. It was just testing me constantly. That is something that I have always cherished as a cricketer,” he continued.

The former India skipper further said that he was happy with his contributions to the team but was not doing enough to convert his decent score into big runs.

Kohli had gone without a fifty-plus score in his last 15 innings in Tests before he scored 186 against Australia.

“I was getting decent scores, but if you ask me if I was happy with what I was doing. I wasn’t. I pride myself in performing for the team to the best of my ability, I certainly wasn’t doing that enough. I wanted to score big runs, that’s something that always propelled me, whether it was at home or away. I was doing that to a certain extent. But I was not having the same kind of impact that I had before,” Kohli said.

The stylish batter will next be seen in action in the third ODI of the three-match series against Australia, scheduled on Wednesday at MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.

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