Former Indian cricketer Sanjay Bangar strolled down memory lane to recall the former Indian skipper Virat Kohli’s gutsy century in the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) 2014-15 Down Under.
Notably, Kohli captained Team India for the first time in that fixture. Speaking on ‘The Great Indian Cricket Show’ on DD Sports, Bangar recalled that Kohli called all Indian players to the dressing room and requested them to go for a win instead of settling for a draw. However, India suffered a 48-run defeat as they got bowled out for 315 while chasing a 364-run target.
Kohli scored 141 runs off 175 balls in India’s second innings. He stitched a 185-run stand for the third wicket with Murali Vijay to take India to 242/2. However, India lost their last eight wickets for 73 runs, losing the game by 48 runs.
“India couldn’t register a win in that series, but it left an imprint that the team was trying to achieve something different. It was an extremely important tour for Virat Kohli because in 2014, he got out to Jimmy Anderson many times. If you have a bad series and then a second consecutive series goes bad, then many questions start getting raised as to whether you can maintain your place in Test cricket,” Bangar said.
“So he was extremely driven to improve that thing. In the first Test, when we were going for the fourth innings and the target was around 350, he called everyone into the dressing room and said we would try to chase, that we had to play for a win and not for a draw, as four sessions were still left. Some other leader might have thought about trying to draw that Test,” he added.
Further, Bangar recalled that the former Indian captain MS Dhoni giving the Test captaincy to Kohli after the completion of the transition period helped Kohli to settle down quickly as a captain.
“Before that, there were two or three slightly tough years for India. Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, and VVS Laxman had retired. So the Indian team was getting settled with a new set of players. When the team got ready after that period, Virat Kohli had also started scoring good runs in international cricket,” Bangar added.
