Dilip Vengsarkar said, ‘I scored 240-250 in the first match against New Zealand. Virat Kohli was asked to start the innings and scored an unbeaten 123 runs.
Virat Kohli, the current captain of the Indian cricket team, is today counted among the best cricketers in the world. Everyone is told about Virat Kohli’s international journey, how he worked on his fitness and got an edge in his batting and broke the records of the big batsmen. But do you know how he got a place in Team India?
Now you must be thinking that he had won the Under 19 World Cup India because of which he got a place in Team India. This is also a reason, but Virat Kohli got a place in Team India after scoring a century in the Emerging Players Tournament against New Zealand. This has been revealed by former selector Dilip Vengsarkar himself.
In an interview to Sportskeeper, Dilip Vengsarkar said, ‘I scored 240-250 in the first match against New Zealand. Virat Kohli was asked to start the innings and scored an unbeaten 123 runs. What impressed me the most was that after scoring a century, he won the match to the team and was not out. Then I thought that this boy must get a place in the Indian team because it is mentally mature and then we picked him in the team. What happened after that is history.
Vengsarkar further said that ‘Emerging Players’ tournament was being played in Australia. I was the chairman of the National Selection Committee. We had decided that at this time it should be to choose young players who can play for India soon or are ready to play. Especially under-23 players. So we chose Virat Kohli in the team.
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Virat Kohli has played 86 Tests, 248 ODIs and 81 T20 matches for India so far in which he has scored 7240, 11867 and 2794 runs respectively. In the current ICC rankings, Virat Kohli is number two in Test cricket, 10th in T20 and in ODIs. Virat Kohli has a total of 43 centuries in ODI cricket and he is second in the list of players who have scored the most centuries after Sachin in this format. At the same time, Virat Kohli has a total of 70 centuries in all three formats.
