Aakash Chopra gives Smith & Root the boot as he names cricket's new 'fab four'

Former Indian cricketer and commentator Aakash Chopra surprisingly gave England's Joe Root and Australia's Steve Smith's name a miss in his new fabulous four of the cricketing world. The fab four, consisting of Virat Kohli, Steve Smith, Joe Root, and Kane Williamson, were widely regarded to be the best in contemporary cricket until Root's form dropped and Smith's dominance stuck to just the longer formats of the game. In the 2019 calendar year, there have been many good finds in Test cricket - such as  Marnus Labuschagne, K L Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Babar Azam and so on. Root's inconsistency coupled with Steve Smith's poor form in the limited-overs formats of the game has forced Aakash Chopra to replace them with two excellent batsmen - one who has extend4ed his dominance from ODIs & T20s to Tests and another who is a youngster who has just taken over the reins of the team and is widely regarded to be Pakistan's Virat Kohli. 

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Aakash Chopra names his new fabulous 4 

Speaking on his YouTube channel, Aakash Chopra picked Pakistan's Babar Azam to be one among the four, pointing out at his fine form and phenomenal run that he has had across all three formats of the game. Aakash Chopra said that Babar Azam could simply not be left out of the fabulous four despite being in the top five rankings for batsmen in all three formats. The second new replacement was none other than the Hitman Rohit Sharma. The opener, who had a phenomenal year in the white-ball formats of the game in 2019 including a century spree at the World Cup, repaid the faith of the selectors when he displayed pure class and ability in the longer format of the game. 

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Kohli on captaincy & when to slow down

Virat, under whose leadership the Indian team are at the summit of the ICC Test Rankings since October 2016 went on to say that it is not easy being captain having that intensity in the practice sessions. He said that it does take a toll on him but periodic breaks seem to work okay for him. Meanwhile, the 'Captain Fearless' also mentioned that when his body cannot take it anymore by the time he is 34-35, he will have a different conversation at that time. 

The top-ranked Test batsman then added that he has no issues at all for the next two-three years.

"I can keep going on with the same intensity and also understand that the team wants a lot of my contribution in the next two to three years so that I can ease into another transition that we faced five-six years ago," he said referring to the retirements of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, and VVS Laxman. 

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