'Was always groomed by MS Dhoni': Virat Kohli shares his thoughts taking over captaincy

Virat Kohli’s recent appearance on the RCB podcast has become the talk of the town for the cricketing world, as he has made several notable revelations about his career on the podcast. One of the main topics Kohli spoke about was his time as the all-format skipper of the Indian cricket team. Kohli took over India’s captaincy role in 2014 after the legendary captain MS Dhoni’s retirement from the format and later became an all-format skipper later in 2017.

Speaking to host Danish Sait on RCB Podcast, Kohli revealed that Dhoni took him under his wings and groomed him for the leadership role from 2012 onwards. “I was his vice-captain. I was always having conversations with him about what we can do in the field. I was always his right-hand man. I was always there understanding the game and I also got confidence because I was playing a lot of match-winning knock for the team,” said Kohli.

Virat Kohli explains how he trained for the captaincy role under MS Dhoni

The former Indian skipper further mentioned that he also used to give a lot of inputs to Dhoni on the field, and never shied away from going to the captain during a tense situation in the game. “I was never really only looking at the scoreboard .. oh these many runs and these many runs. I was more into what’s the pitch doing and what’s the conditions are like, what can we do to break the partnership.. all those kind of things. He understood that very early,” the 34-year-old added.

Crediting Dhoni for his smooth transition into a leader, Kohli added that he will always respect the former for his leadership and playing style. The former RCB captain also mentioned that he never had any ill intentions towards Dhoni and always respected his trust in him. Kohli further explained how things were always very simple for the team in the presence of MS Dhoni.

“When I became the captain, it was the same. He will give me advice all the time and I was able to tell him that I don’t want to use this at this moment and let’s go ahead and use this plan. It was very clear and very simple. There was never awkwardness, there was never ‘any of this’ he might feel bad or I might feel bad’. It never happened,” said Kohli. Dhoni shared the Indian dressing room with Kohli from the latter's debut in 2008 to 2019.