'I went on a U-19 tour...': WV Raman recalls spotting Kohli’s potential during his early days

New Delhi, Oct 30 (IANS) Former India cricketer and former women's coach WV Raman reminisced about identifying Virat Kohli’s potential during his U19 days, revealing that he had predicted Kohli would not only play for India but also go on to lead the national team.

Kohli got his first opportunity to play for India when he played for under-19 team in 2006 as a teenager, guiding the same team to a World Cup win in 2008. His senior international career took off soon after when he made his ODI debut against Sri Lanka in August 2008 and marked his Test debut in 2011 against the West Indies at Kingston.

"I went on a U-19 tour. Virat Kohli didn’t score much in that tour. I wrote a report saying, "He will definitely play for India and will lead the team as captain." Someone asked, "You wrote about a guy who didn’t score in 15 days.I replied, "If you know what to look for, 15 minutes is enough and I have seen it," Raman said on Cricket Petta, a Sony Sports Network Tamil Cricket Podcast.

The charismatic batter, who has 29 Test centuries and 50 ODI tons, Kohli was appointed Test captain in 2014 in the middle of the series against Australia when MS Dhoni was recuperating from an injury. The batter was later named the permanent captain of the team after Dhoni announced his retirement ahead of the fourth Test of that series.

"If we're around in 5-6 years, we'll see what happens. A few year later, an administrator later called and said, "Kohli’s played for India, you were right” I told the administrator, “there is one more thing left (Indian captain), That will also happen In the future," Raman added.

Kohli then took over as India's limited-overs captain from MS Dhoni in 2017, led the team in 95 ODIs, winning 65 of them with a win percentage of 68. Kohli led India in the Champions Trophy and the 2019 World Cup.

Recently, during the Bangladesh Test series, Kohli became the fastest player to reach 27000 international runs during second Test in Kanpur, shattering legendary India batter Sachin Tendulkar's record (623 innings) as he was able to achieve the feat in just 594 innings.