Kohli adorns 2017 Wisden cover after Sachin
Virat Kohli achieves a new feat in cricketing world as he becomes the second Indian to feature on the cover of Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack after cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar.
Kohli has been praised for his captaincy as well apart from his spot-on batting consistency. Kohli has been on the winning side of back to back series which has led to veterans lauding his effort.
After former captain MS Dhoni stepped down from the captaincy he has won the ODI and T20I series against England as well.
Wisden’s editor Lawrence Booth has nothing but praises for Kohli who sent touring England empty-handed, beating them in every format of the game. He has reinvented himself as a Test batsman as well scoring double-hundred against West Indies and England.
Booth told a leading cricket website, “It underlines the fact that he is a very modern cricketer. It felt like the right time to get some unorthodoxy onto the cover. People often think of Wisden as a bastion of orthodoxy, but cricket is changing so rapidly that it felt like the right time to reflect that, and Kohli was the right man for the job,”
Earlier Sachin Tendulkar featured on the cover of Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack in 2014. “Kohli will be fresh in the mind of all cricket fans after his performances against England,” Booth said.
“He has pulled clear of the likes of Steve Smith, Joe Root, Kane Williamson and AB de Villiers, and is clearly the most exciting all-format batsman in world cricket,” he added.
List of records for Kohli in 2016:
- Fastest to 25 ODI tons
- Fastest to 7,500 ODI runs
- Equals Sachin Tendulkar's (14) record of most hundreds in successful run chases
- Most runs in IPL in a single season
- Most hundreds in IPL in a year
- Only Indian Test captain to score three double hundreds
- Third player to score three double hundreds in a calendar year after Don Bradman and Ricky Ponting
- First Indian captain to register nine Test wins in a calendar year
- First Indian captain to register five successive Test series wins
- First Indian to aggregate over 1000 Test runs in a calendar year since Rahul Dravid, who made 1145 runs in 2011.