As he goes about shattering records in world cricket, people feel he is just in “the form of his life”. But only a few know that there is hardly any period when he is out of form. If you take away the 2014 series in England, then I am sure you will have a hard time remembering his lean patch since his debut more than 10 years ago. The longevity of a player in any sport is directly proportional to the consistency he/she shows. The longer you perform, longer you stay in the team. No rocket science behind this fact.
Virat has shown growth beyond anyone’s expectations. Yuvraj Singh once said, “What we learnt in 10 years of playing cricket, Virat learnt it in 3 years”. That was quite a compliment given the fact it was from one of the best limited overs cricketers. When Rohit Sharma goes about making double hundreds for fun, one does not stop calling him a better batsman than the Indian skipper. To be honest, on that given day when Rohit is on song, he is better, but given the fact that Kohli does it on a regular basis makes the opinions go one sided. It is the consistency that Rohit lacks and Virat more than makes up for that. Not to mention the hard yards that he puts, the high fitness regime that he follows have played very important roles in his success.
Having an average in excess of 50 over all three formats for a longer duration is no ordinary achievement. He is just over 30 and looks likely to leapfrog Tendulkar in terms of his long standing record of 49 centuries in one day cricket. The master of chases is already being touted as the “greatest one day player ever” with people like Vivian Richards supporting the statement just mentioned. Well, he does keep justifying the statement himself, doesn’t he ? Let’s just hope that he keeps doing what he is doing now for as long as he can and take Indian cricket to an even further level.
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