Virat Kohli is the closest thing that has come to Sachin Tendulkar. After Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting, Kohli has the third-most international centuries in world cricket with 70 hundreds across formats. When you talk of comparisons with the great Tendulkar, only Kohli comes to mind. And why not? After all, he is the most prolific and compete batter India has produced after Sachin. His poor form aside, Kohli is still the only cricketer in the modern era who has a chance to go past the legendary Tendulkar in terms of records. At 43 ODI centuries, he is just six behind Tendulkar's tally.
The fact that Kohli is being spoken of in the same sentence as Tendulkar speaks volumes of the India superstar's hard work and determination. When Kohli debuted for India as a 19-year-old in 2008, not any could have imagined the kind of rise he would witness. By 2013, Kohli had become the superstar of Indian batting and he would go on to dominate world cricket over the next 7 years. But even when he was young, Kohli had the self-confidence and belief that he could match Tendulkar's batting accolades. Yes, you heard it right.
Ashwin Krishnan, head of Sports Marketing at Oakley, recalled meeting a young Kohli a many years ago where Virat admitted that he would catch up to Tendulkar's records at least in ODI cricket.
"That Virat Kohli's one-day record is phenomenal is an understatement. And he is inching closer to that record of Sachin's - whether he gets there or not that's not the point. I will tell you a little story. In 2013, we went to sign Virat in LA, for Oakley. And we were sitting there. Virat had come with his manager Bunty and I had come down from Mumbai. I was doing the Champions League and has gone down just to sign him. And sitting there, as a 24-year-old with 9 ODI hundreds under his belt, he sat down and said, 'One-Day mein toh main paaji (Sachin) ko pakad loonga. Paaji had 49 hundreds," Krishnan told Jamie Alter on his Glance chat show, The Alternate View.
{{/usCountry}}"That Virat Kohli's one-day record is phenomenal is an understatement. And he is inching closer to that record of Sachin's - whether he gets there or not that's not the point. I will tell you a little story. In 2013, we went to sign Virat in LA, for Oakley. And we were sitting there. Virat had come with his manager Bunty and I had come down from Mumbai. I was doing the Champions League and has gone down just to sign him. And sitting there, as a 24-year-old with 9 ODI hundreds under his belt, he sat down and said, 'One-Day mein toh main paaji (Sachin) ko pakad loonga. Paaji had 49 hundreds," Krishnan told Jamie Alter on his Glance chat show, The Alternate View.
{{/usCountry}}Weighing in on Kohli's long string low scores, Krishnan insisted that the former India captain is not out of form, saying that his head is not in the right place. Krishnan adds that a player of Kohli's caliber can't not be in form and that once he gets it right, runs will flow from his bat.
"For a boy sitting there and saying I'll get 40 one-day hundreds, just like that - not to mention the Test hundreds that he had - goes to show his confidence. So when somebody says Virat Kohli is out of form, I say 'No, he is not out of form'. Just his mind is not in the right place. He is exactly the Virat Kohli he was. You cannot take away from a man of that quality. You cannot," he mentioned.