Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting has revealed that he was shocked after Indian captain Virat Kohli announced he's stepping down from India’s red-ball captaincy late in January 2022.
According to Ponting, the has had a chat with Kohli during the first leg of the 2021 season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), which was held between April 9 and May 2 and during that discussion, the then all-format skipper of India had revealed that he was thinking of stepping down from limited-overs captaincy but never said any such plans about Tests.
“Yes, it did actually (surprise me)," Ponting said about Kohli’s decision of stepping down. "Probably the main reason why is because I had a chat and good catch-up with Virat during the first part of the IPL (2021) before it got postponed,” added the Delhi Capitals skipper in his interview with the ICC website.
Talking about Kohli’s love for the longest format, the 47-year-old said, "He was talking then about stepping away (from captaincy) from white-ball cricket and how passionate he was to continue on to be Test match captain. He just loved and cherished that job and that post so much. Obviously, the Indian Test team had achieved a lot under his leadership. When I heard it, I was really, really surprised.
You only have to watch him on the field for an hour of the day's play to realise how passionate he is about that job and the role, how much he wants the team to win and how much he wants the best for Indian cricket."
Saying that India is one of the toughest countries to captain and that everything has a shelf life, Ponting said that if we look in hindsight, it was probably a smart decision by Kohli.
"I think there is potentially a shelf-life for international cricket captains and even coaches. Virat's been there for close to seven years now.
If there's a country in the world that's the most difficult to captain, it’s probably India because of just how popular the game is and how much every single Indian love to see the fortunes of the Indian cricket team, whether they are good or bad. You weigh all those things up,” he said.