‘Pick up the phone, talk to each other’: Kapil’s advice to Kohli, BCCI

Days after outgoing India captain Virat Kohli and BCCI officials openly expressed their differences with each other, former India captain Kapil Dev has urged the two sides to sit down and sort out their differences.

Kohli first quit as the skipper of the T20 squad after the World Cup debacle in Dubai and was removed unceremoniously as the leader of the ODI squad just ahead of the South Africa tour. After India failed to win the Test series against South Africa, Virat Kohli gave up the Test captainship as well.

A day before leaving for South Africa, Kohli made a big claim saying no BCCI official tried to persuade him to stay back as T20 captain. BCCI president Sourav Ganguly retorted, saying the Board had indeed asked Virat to stay on, but he didn’t.

Kapil, who captained India’s first World Cup winning squad in 1983, said Kohli may have reasons for leaving Test captainship and we should respect his decision and the contribution he has made to Indian cricket.

The right-handed batter from Delhi can be credited for making India the number 1 Test team in the world. It was under Kohli’s leadership that India won its first Test series in Australia in 2019. Till date, Virat Kohli remains the best Indian Test captain with 40 wins and 17 losses in 68 Tests as captain. He also ranks fourth in the list of most victories as Test captain behind South Africa’s Graeme Smith (53) and Australian duo of Ricky Ponting (48) and Steve Waugh (41).

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“When he quit the T20I captaincy, one thought perhaps there was too much on his mind. From what we have read and heard, nobody wanted him to give up captaincy (then or now). He is a fantastic player; we should respect his decision,” Kapil told The Week magazine.

Giving a word of advice to the enigmatic batsman, Kapil said Virat should be a little more patient with the BCCI. “They should have sorted out the issues between them. Pick up the phone, talk to each other, put the country and team before yourself. In the beginning, I also got everything I wanted. But sometimes, you may not get it. That should not mean that you leave the captaincy. If he has left it because of that, then I do not know what to say,” Kapil said.

Kapil said he is eager to see Virat score many more runs, especially in Test cricket.