Former India skipper Sourav Ganguly was full of praise Virat Kohli as the latter once again scored a double hundred in the ongoing one-off Test against Bangladesh.
During the process, he became the first batsman ever to score four double centuries in four consecutive Test series, going past Sir Donald Bradman and Rahul Dravid. He has also broken a number of other records which include the most runs scored by an Indian player in a home season.
Virender Sehwag scored 1105 runs in 17 innings in the 2004-05 season at 69.06. Kohli has already amassed 1168 runs in 15 innings at an average of 89.84 and with Australia series next, he is only going to raise the bar for the others in future.
Ganguly was quick to point out that the series against Australia in 2014 was the moment which changed Virat Kohli as a batsman.
“I think the tour of Australia in 2014 completely changed Virat Kohli the batsman. Four back-to-back hundreds in that series, I think that was above all. His performance in that series was by far the best I’ve seen in a long long time. And I don’t know whether Kohli himself can match that again,” Ganguly to India Today in an exclusive interview.
“It’s about being at the peak, it’s a situation in an athlete’s career where you just hit it. There’s no when, there’s no how. It’s just a patch you hit and you make the most of it. Rahul Dravid from 2001 to 2005 scored runs all around the world and it’s the same thing with Virat Kohli,” he added.
After witnessing his purple patch, Ganguly is confident the Delhi lad can score another double century against Australia.
“Australia will be better than Bangladesh. They’ve got the fast-bowling attack to exploit these conditions. The likes of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and the rest will get the ball to reverse. But once again the challenge for Australia will be spin. That’s the key in the sub-continent, you have to play spin well and bowl spin well.
“But Virat Kohli is good enough to get double hundreds against Australia also. So it doesn’t matter what the opposition is, here you have a player who can get runs in all conditions and get runs against the best teams in the world. He will be up and ready against Australia because he knows that’s a big series,” Ganguly concluded.