India vs New Zealand 2016: Top 5 captaincy moments from Virat Kohli
Virat Kohli-led Indian team trounced New Zealand in the 3-match Test series and in the process have become the number 1 Test team. Kohli has now won 10 Test matches, going past MAK Pataudi and Sunil Gavaskar's tally of victories. He will now have the record of MS Dhoni, Sourav Ganguly and Mohammad Azharuddin in his sights.
If the performance of the Indian team is anything to go by, this home season promises to be a bumper one for Kohli and his boys. The Delhi lad has displayed tremendous panache as a skipper and his intent during the matches is receiving rave reviews from all quarters.
Also read: India vs New Zealand Series: Player ratings
Kohli has instilled a sense of self-belief into the team, and thus it gives the team a great opportunity to consolidate their position at the top of the Test rankings.
Here in this list, we take a look at top 5 captaincy moments from Virat right throughout the series.
#1 The ploy to play 4 specialist bowlers
Ever since Kohli assumed the mantle of the team, he has been very vocal about playing 5 bowlers in Test cricket. He did employ these tactics in Sri Lanka, against South Africa and also in the West Indies. However, in the final Test against West Indies, he went in with 4 bowlers, which came as a bit of surprise for everyone.
He continued this ploy into this Test series too and went in with 2 spinners in R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja , and 2 seam bowlers in all the matches. While this tactic did surprise a few, but this was a well thought out ploy. The pitches in all 3 matches were not ideal for batsmen, and thus the decision to strengthen the batting worked richly for the Indians. The lower order bailed the team out from tricky situations in the first and second Test matches.
Also, as the pitches favoured the spinners, two were more than enough for the Kiwi batsmen, as even if a 3rd spinner would have been included he would have been under-bowled.