Ravichandran Ashwin says Virat Kohli will take Indian cricket to greater heights

Kohli scored his 26^th century in ODIs against New Zealand (Image Courtesy: BCCI)

Virat Kohli has been an unstoppable force in ODIs and T20s in the recent past and this his batting prowess was on display once more in India’s 3^rd ODI against New Zealand.

Ravichandran Ashwin heaped praise on the Indian Test skipper and said that Kohli will take Indian cricket to heights that no has seen before.

Also read: MS Dhoni praises Virat Kohli after match-winning knock at Mohali

Ashwin, in an exclusive interview with India Today on Monday following India's victory in the third ODI against New Zealand in Mohali, said that there was no adjective to describe Virat and said that the Indian run-machine is a role model to him.

Ashwin says Kohli will drive Indian cricket forward

The off-spinner had this to say to India Today, "I think he is one of those guys who will drive Indian cricket really forward and up and to heights we have never seen before."

Ashwin agreed with former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly's views on Kohli and said that he was at a loss of words to describe Kohli. "There is not one adjective that I put down for Virat. If at all I can describe him, it would be 'role-model'. I kind of started playing cricket with him and he was this excited kid who burst on to the scene, was very aggressive, he wore his emotions on his heart while he played cricket," Ashwin was quoted as saying by India Today.

Kohli Leads by example, says Ashwin

The Tamil Nadu spinner went on to say that Kohli resembled the next generation of Indian cricketers and his aggression on the field shouldn't be misunderstood as arrogance. He went on to add, "He is extremely fit and leads by example, only if you do something you can actually pull up your players and demand it out of your players, every walk of the game he tries to lead by example."

Ashwin said that Kohli is one of the finest chasers in Indian cricket at the moment and probably the best the world has seen so far. The off-spinner went on to say that Kohli has mastered the trick to  score  the twos and threes and has a matured head when it comes to chasing huge targets.

"Once upon a time we used to say Michael Bevan is great at chasing but times have changed, this is a different era and people are hunting down different kinds of scores, you don't know where it will go, one day we might be chasing 400 on a regular basis. Virat's performance training and his attention to detail on smaller things, how he can convert ones to twos, how he can sustain after the 40th over make him one of the best," Ashwin was quoted as saying by India Today.

With the amount of praise that has been showered on Kohli lately, it remains to be seen if he can continue to perform the same way in the future.