3 Players Who Didn’t Get A Fair Run Under Kohli: In cricket, the captain is the one who calls the shots almost always. There is the selection committee, coach, and management but it’s the captain who holds the aces. A captain’s decision is the most influential one. There are players in the team whom the captain banks on. They are the players who are the captain’s go-to personnel.
But there are certain players who find themselves on the other side of the fence. They tend to feel hard done. Virat Kohli’s captaincy tenure in Indian cricket was no different. There were several players who have the right to feel that they didn’t get enough chances consistently.
We Look At 3 Such Players Who Didn’t Get a Fair Run Under Kohli:
#3 Sanju Samson
He was arguably the first of the Indian batters who played an all-out aggressive brand of cricket. Sanju Samson’s big break came on the back of a solid IPL season in 2020. He was on the flight to Australia for the 3-match T20I series. Samson scored 47 runs in 3 games but his strike rate of 138.23 stood out.
He admitted that he played true to the team’s cause. But Samson was largely overlooked post the series. He wasn’t even in the contention for T20 World Cup 2021. For all his talent, Samson had to really endure a game of patience.
#2 Suryakumar Yadav
There are no better batsmen in T20I cricket than Suryakumar Yadav currently. He averages 37.4 after 20 games. Nobody strikes better than Surya (175.9) in the format (batsman to score more than 100 runs). To imagine that he had to wait for so long is beyond anybody’s understanding.
Surya had to grapple with issues of his own. His temperament and consistency were his biggest enemies. He overcame those odds once he moved to Mumbai Indians in 2018. Surya came into his own since then. But still, he had to wait until 2021 to make his debut.
#1 Ambati Rayudu
He is arguably one of the unluckiest cricketers to have played for the country. Ambati Rayudu has had a rollercoaster cricketing career. He broke onto the world scene as a U-19 prodigy in 2002. But it took him another 11 years to make it to the Indian team. Rayudu was picked for the World Cup in 2015 but he didn’t play a single game. His career went nowhere until a fine season in 2018.
Rayudu got picked for the national side with the 2019 World Cup in view. He was publicly acknowledged as India’s number 4 batter heading into the World Cup. But all it took was 3 indifferent games for the team to drop Rayudu. He wasn’t picked for the ODI World Cup, a tournament on which he had bet his career.