How Shastri diffused captaincy situation between Kohli & Dhoni: 'Unless you respect him..'

Former India fielding coach R Sridhar has revealed how the then head coach Ravi Shastri diffused the white-ball captaincy situation between Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni. In his book 'Coaching Beyond- My days with the Indian cricket team', Sridhar wrote that Kohli was quite eager to take over as captain in the white-ball formats too in 2016, and said a few things that showed he was looking for Dhoni to step down. Sridhar revealed that Shastri had to step in and advise Kohli to wait for Dhoni to hand him the captaincy. 

"There was a time in 2016 when Virat was very eager to be the captain of the white-ball team too. He said a few things that showed he was looking for the captaincy," Sridhar wrote in his book. 

"One evening, Ravi called him and said, 'Look, Virat, MS gave it (the captaincy) to you in red-ball cricket. You have to respect him. He will give it to you in limited-overs cricket, too, when the time is right. Unless you respect him now, tomorrow when you are the captain, you won't get the respect from your team. Respect him now, irrespective of what is going on. It will come to you, you don't have to run behind it'," he added. 

Dhoni's retirement

Dhoni stepped down as captain of the Indian white-ball teams in 2017 and Kohli became in charge of all three formats. Dhoni continued to play limited-overs cricket for a couple of years after that under the captaincy of Kohli. Dhoni announced his international retirement after the 2019 Cricket World Cup in England. 

Kohli led India until 2022 when he too stepped down as captain from the shortest format of the game. Kohli wanted to continue as ODI and Test captain but BCCI felt it would be better if one player remains in charge of both white-ball formats and replaced him with Rohit Sharma. Kohli then decided to step down as Test captain as well in 2021. Rohit was then made the captain of Team India in all three formats. Currently, Hardik Pandya is vying for captaincy in the shortest format for India. 

Image: ANI