“Rohit never gets overawed, Kohli tactically sound,” Ravi Shastri passes verdict on Rohit and Kohli

Ravi Shastri, the previous coach of the Indian cricket team, reckons the biggest strength of India’s new limited-over captain Rohit Sharma is that he doesn’t let the occasion or the situation get better of him.

According to Shastri, Rohit always looks to maximise the resources he has and does whatever is best for the team at a given point of time. His quality of keeping things simple, both while decision-making and batting and not getting overawed by anything, is what makes him a good leader.

Ravi Shastri, however, also insisted that the previous Indian captain Virat Kohli, whom Rohit has replaced in limited-over cricket, was tactically brilliant and should be proud of his accomplishments as an Indian captain in all formats of the game.

Kohli handled pressure brilliantly: Ravi Shastri

Shastri commended Kohli for the way he handled the pressure that came with the profile of an Indian captain and still delivered outstanding results for India, not just as a captain, but also as a batsman, scoring most of the runs for the team himself.

“Rohit is not overawed, he marshalls all the resources of the team. Kohli has been a tactically sound captain. Efficient,” Shastri said, expressing his views on Rohit and Kohli while speaking exclusively to The Week.

While India couldn’t be the most successful team in ICC tournaments under Kohli’s captaincy, they were comfortably the most successful team in the world in bilateral series across formats, both at home and while touring overseas.

In an era where most of the teams are strong at home and hardly any team wins overseas, India won the test series in Australia twice, led a postponed test series in England 2-1 and won a T20 international series each in South Africa, New Zealand, England and Australia under Kohli.

Failure to win an ICC trophy in 4 years eventually got Kohli sacked as a limited over the captain, which many thoughts was an incredibly harsh call, but even Kohli’s harshest of critics can’t question India’s consistency under Kohli in a red ball or white-ball cricket.