"He did a magnificent job" - Ravi Shastri in awe of Virat Kohli's tenure as a test captain

Virat Kohli captained India from 2014-15 to 2022.

Ravi Shastri, the former head coach of India, has commended star batsman Virat Kohli‘s leadership and batting abilities, stating that he excelled in both areas while he was playing.

Virat Kohli had taken up India’s test captaincy in 2014-15 when MS Dhoni retired from the format in the middle of the Australia tour that season. Then he became the all-format captain of the Men in Blue in 2017, after MS Dhoni stepped down from the helm.

Shastri had joined the Indian team in 2015 as the director of cricket and then became the head coach of the team in 2017, forming a great coach-captain bond with Virat Kohli that took India to the pinnacle of test cricket and even in white-ball formats.

India reached the knockouts of the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy, the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup, and the final of the inaugural ICC World Test Championship (WTC) in 2021. And then under Virat Kohli’s captaincy, India remained the no. 1-ranked test team in the world for five years in a row.

“He did a magnificent job”—Ravi Shastri on Virat Kohli as batter and captain of the Indian team.

Kohli stepped down as India captain in white-ball cricket in 2021 and in tests in 2022 after a tiff with then Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President Sourav Ganguly. Kohli retired from T20Is after India won the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 and most recently called time on his test career in May 2025.

Kohli stands as India’s most successful test skipper, winning 40 of the 68 games he led, 13 more than the next-best, former skipper MS Dhoni.

“It was great. He (Kohli) was the one man I identified who will lead the team, and I wanted him to lead the team. Once I took over the job and once Dhoni had finished, and he did a magnificent job,” Shastri said while speaking to Sky Sports.

“First, his skills as a batter, his ability to dominate, to be in the face, to play hard but play fair, and to want to win and take the game forward. I would say Kohli, the batter in his pomp, was unbelievable because in those five years, when India was No. 1 in the red ball format, some of the innings he played in Australia, South Africa, England, and across formats were unreal,” Shastri said..

Here is the video:

Together as coach and captain, Shastri and Kohli led India to its maiden test series win in Australia in 2018-19 and consecutive series wins in the West Indies. In conditions that were difficult for subcontinental teams, the team competed head-to-head with the home teams in South Africa and England.

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