Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting revealed that Virat Kohli, who recently stepped away from India’s captaincy in Test Cricket, had a chat with him during the first half of IPL 2021 and mentioned that he would like to step away from white-ball captaincy. But Ponting is surprised with his decision to resign from the Test captaincy as well.

In the past 4 months, Virat Kohli resigned from all of his captaincy duties one by one. Firstly he announced that he won’t captain his IPL franchise RCB after the 2021 season. Then after the T20 World Cup, he resigned from the T20I captaincy citing his workload management.

Then right before the South Africa tour, he was sacked from the ODI captaincy as the selectors wanted the same captain in both white-ball formats. And after the test series loss against South Africa by 1-2, he stepped down from the captaincy in the longest format as well.

World Test Championship, India — Virat Kohli[photo: Twitter]

Virat Kohli captained India in 68 Tests

Speaking to former England cricketer Isa Guha on the first episode of the ICC Review, Ponting revealed that he had a chat with Virat regarding his captaincy future during the India leg of IPL 2021.

“Yes, it did actually (surprise me). Probably the main reason why is I had a chat and good catch-up with Virat during the first part of the IPL (2021) before it got postponed. He was talking then about stepping away (from captaincy) from white-ball cricket and how passionate he was to continue on to be Test match captain.

“He just loved and cherished that job and that post so much. Obviously, the Indian Test team had achieved a lot under his leadership. When I heard it, I was really, really surprised,” said Ponting when he was asked if Kohli’s decision to resign from Test captaincy surprised him.

Ponting recalled his own time as captain he believes that captaincy takes a toll on one’s body both mentally and physically. Ponting captained Australia in 77 Test matches with 48 wins and 16 losses.

“I was shocked, but then I started thinking about other things, even my own time as captain. I have gone on record and said that I probably think I played a couple of years longer than I should have in hindsight. I think I might have been captain for a couple of years longer than I should have.” he added.

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Ponting stated that captaincy in a country like India is a huge responsibility where there is so much passion for the game. He believes that Virat would have considered all those things to prolong his career as a player.

“So I think there is potentially a shelf-life for international cricket captains and even coaches. Virat’s been there for close to seven years now.

“If there’s a country in the world that’s the most difficult to captain, it’s probably India because of just how popular the game is and how much every single Indian loves to see the fortunes of the Indian cricket team, whether they are good or bad. You weigh all those things up,” he concluded.

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