Former Pakistan pacer Shoaib Akhtar has made a sensational claim that there are lobbies against Virat Kohli which has forced him to step down from captaincy.
In the last 4 months, Virat Kohli has resigned from captaincy in all formats one by one. Before the T20 World Cup, he announced that he would step down from T20I captaincy after the tournament and one month later, the selectors sacked him from ODI captaincy as well. And after the test series loss against South Africa, he decided to stand down from Test captaincy as well.
Virat Kohli captained India in 68 Tests, 95 ODIs, and 50 T20Is.
Shoaib Akhtar claimed that he could sense during the T20 World Cup that things are not well with Virat Kohli.
“It was a tight scenario for Virat. I was in Dubai and I was aware that if he wouldn’t have won the T20 World Cup, it would have become a big problem for him and it did happen. There are lobbies against him and there are people against him and that is the reason why he stepped down,” Shoaib Akhtar spoke to India Today.
India lost their first two games against Pakistan & New Zealand in the T20 World Cup and was eventually knocked out from the group stage. But things seem to be heated up when he contradicted Sourav Ganguly’s statement. The BCCI president spoke in an interview that he asked Kohli to reconsider his resignation from the T20I captaincy. But Kohli denied if any such conversation happened between him and BCCI officials.
Akhtar believes that Kohli will find his old mojo with the bat as he has lots of cricket left in him. He claimed that he could score another 50 centuries in international cricket.
“Now that he is off the hook, he just has to make sure that he enjoys his cricket. He is great and he should know that. He just has to enhance his value. He should know that he can’t be imprisoned of his own bitterness. He should forget and forgive people,” Akhtar said.
“His next 50 centuries will be because of the anger that he has now. And, this anger does not have to be reflected on people but in his batting,” he added.
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